CHINOOK 
























































































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“Now swim!” commanded their mother. 


—Page 12 











CHINOOK 

THE CINNAMON CUB 


ALLEN CHAFFEE 

Author of “SITKA, The Snow Baby,” “FUZZY WUZZ, 
The Little Brown Bear,’* “TWINKLY EYES, 

The Little Black Bear,” etc. 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

PETER DA RU 


MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY 
SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS 






Copyright, 1924 

By MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY 
Springfield, Massachusetts 
All Rights Reserved 


Bradley Quality Boohs 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 



APR 21 1924 

©C1A793397 


•A \ 




FOREWORD 

Here are stories of the wild life of the 
rich woods of Oregon. 

In following the adventures of Chinook, 
the cinnamon hear and his sister Snookie 
(western prototypes of the jolly black 
bears of New England), and of the Ranger’s 
Boy, the child will learn of tree mice and 
burrow mice, and of the little mountain 
pack-rats who build tepees, of those giant 
mousers, the bobcat and the California 
mountain lion, to say nothing of the bat, 
pika, elk, and “snowshoe rabbit,” and the 
ever present Douglas squirrel. 

He will wander through forests of spruce 
and fir to the snow-clad peaks, and back 
along cascading rivers, as the two cubs learn 
of the world in which they live. 

The Literary Review of the New York 
Evening Post has said of a black bear book: 


FOREWORD 


“The little bear will delight all children just 
because he is a ball of mischief, sagacity, 
awkwardness—a real bear. Allen Chaffee’s 
books are unusual for vivacity, humor, and 
truth to the characters of the no longer 
dumb beasts.” 


The Publishers. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER pAGK 

I A Boy and a Bear. 1 

II The Cubs Learn to Swim .... 8 

III The California Lion.14 

IY The Home in the Squirrel’s Nest . 21 

V Mr. and Mrs. Tree Mouse .... 27 

VI Mazama the Mysterious .... 34 

YII Lost in the Fog 42 

VIII Team Work. 50 

IX Rat Town.58 

X A Live Snowball. 68 

XI The Indian Trapper.78 

XII In the Raven’s Nest.85 

XIII Chinook Plays the Clown .... 90 

XIV A Mouse on Wings. 94 

XV The Smuggler. 100 

XVI Douglas Squirrel Has Company . . 104 

XVII Wapiti. 113 

XVIII A Cougar Goes Coasting .... 120 

XIX Mountain Beaver. 125 

XX The Big ’Quake.. . • . 129 















CHINOOK 

THE CINNAMON CUB 

CHAPTER I 


A BOY AND A BEAR 

rpHE golden dawn of a June day in the 
Oregon woods streamed in slant bars 
between the tall trunks of the yellow pines, 
and into the rocky gulch where Mother 
Brown Bear had her den. 

Dewdrops gleamed like diamonds on 
every flower and fern and spider web that 
bordered the cascading creek. Mrs. Tree 
Mouse peered with bright, beady eyes as a 
small, roguish face peeked from the cave 
mouth. Then out into the warming sun¬ 
shine burst two of the most roly-poly little 
brown bears that she had ever seen. For a 
few minutes they wrestled like two boys, 
standing up on their short hind leg's to pom- 
1 


2 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

mel one another, or galloping about in a 
game of tag. Their small, flat feet made 
prints in the soft earth for all the world like 
the prints of a human child’s foot, and their 
black eyes twinkled with fun. It was Chi¬ 
nook and his sister Snookie, their soft fur 
gleaming cinnamon-brown in the sunshine. 

Then the huge form of Mother Brown 
Bear came lumbering through the cave 
mouth, and with a soft rumble deep down 
in her chest she bade them follow her. She 
made her way lumberingly down over the 
crags and fallen logs to a stump where she 
might breakfast on a great cluster of yellow 
mushrooms. The cubs had had their milk 
in the cave, but they always wanted to sam¬ 
ple everything their mother ate, and they 
went scrambling after her as fast as their 
short legs and fat sides would let them. 

The canyon in which they had been born 
that spring was a wild mass of tumbled rocks 
and mossy boulders where, years before, a 
landslide or an earthquake might have tossed 
them. Just below their cave lay a tangle of 


A BOY AND A BEAR 


3 


fallen tree trunks piled crisscross, and over¬ 
grown with a jungle of the mammoth ferns 
that throve in that moist soil. Just now 
these logs were encrusted with the brilliant- 
hued mushrooms that Mother Brown Bear 
loved. Later there would be blueberries and 
wild blackberries where now pale blossoms 
shone in the sunlight. In the stream to 
which their cascading streamlet led were 
trout, and in the great river beyond were 
salmon who came from the sea to lay 
their eggs in the gravel. On the mountain¬ 
sides about them, where the wind-swept 
junipers twisted like gnomes above the 
rocky ledges, lived burrow mice and wood 
rats who would furnish good sport when the 
berries failed. It was a splendid bit of 
wilderness on which Mother Brown Bear 
had staked out her claim, and the cubs were 
eager to be taken exploring. 

They had nearly reached a point where 
the huge fallen trunks, propped breast high 
to a man on their broken branches, threw 
long black shadows along the ground in 


4 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

which the cubs could hide in case of danger, 
when Mother Brown Bear sounded a note of 
warning deep down in her throat. 

Someone was coming along the trail. 
With the fur bristling along the back of her 
neck, she rose to her hind legs and listened, 
wriggling her nose this way and that to de¬ 
tect what manner of creature it could be. 
He was certainly a noisy animal, for the 
fallen branches cracked under his feet. 
That meant that he was without fear. He 
must be large and ferocious. But the wind 
blew in the wrong direction to carry the mes¬ 
sage to her nose. 

Chinook also rose to his hind legs ready 
to fight, and he too peered this way and that, 
sniffing and cocking his ears in his effort to 
see what it was. Snookie, though she 
reared up in a pose that looked like fight, 
preferred to take her stand behind her 
mother, and while Chinook genuinely hoped 
there would be a good scrap, Snookie pri¬ 
vately wished there wouldn’t. For Snookie 


A BOY AND A BEAR 


5 


was the smaller cub, and in her bouts with 
her brother she always seemed to get the 
worst of it. 

“Whoof! Who is it?” asked Mother 
Brown Bear under her breath. “Whoof!” 
echoed her small son aggressively, and 
* ‘ Whoof!” said Snookie in a wee, small 
voice. 

Then along the trail came someone at¬ 
tired in blue overalls and a wide straw hat, 
who walked on his hind legs like a bear and 
carried a fishy smelling rod over his shoul¬ 
der. It was the Ranger’s Boy, who meant 
to surprise his mother with a string of trout 
for breakfast. 

“G-r-r!” warned Mother Brown Bear. 
“Don’t come any nearer, or I’ll do some¬ 
thing dreadful to you.” For she was al¬ 
ways afraid that harm would come to her 
wee, fuzzy children. The Ranger was in 
charge of these woods, and he and the man 
cub had never harmed her, though of course, 
she told herself, she was large enough to 


6 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

have fought off a whole family of rangers. 
But with her babies it was different. They 
had come into the world soft and helpless, 
and it would still be many moons before they 
could look out for themselves. “Gr-r-r!” 
she warned the Boy again. But he had 
stopped in his tracks to stare at them. 

With Chinook it was far different. He 
felt so fine and fit that he just itched for a 
fight with someone beside Snookie, and he 
growled a “Come on!” deep down in his 
furry chest. 

“Hello, there!” exclaimed the Boy softly 
from the far side of the windfall, his eyes 
laughing as he saw the two new little bears 
standing there ready for fight. He knew 
better than to come any nearer their mother, 
but he also knew there was no need to run 
away, so long as he kept his distance. 
“You’re a funny rascal,” he told Chinook. 
“A regular scrapper, aren’t you ? I wouldn’t 
mind making friends with you some day,” 
and his voice was reassuring. Chinook un- 


A BOY AND A BEAR 


7 


derstood the Boy’s tone, and his quiet atti¬ 
tude, better than the words. 

“I’ll fight you any time,” growled Chi¬ 
nook, and he struck an even saucier pose, 
his little black eyes twinkling roguishly. 


CHAPTER II 

THE CUBS LEARN TO SWIM 

4 6 -R-R! Better go on! ’ ’ warned 
Mother Brown Bear, and at that, 
the Ranger’s Boy thought best to inarch 
down the trail. But some day, he promised 
himself, he was going to see more of that 
bear cub. As for Chinook, he was consumed 
with a great curiosity to know more of the 
man cub who walked on his hind legs all the 
way. 

What an interesting world it was that lay 
all about him! First there had been the 
sour-tasting ants and buttery grubs that his 
mother was always finding under the fallen 
logs and boulders. Then there was Douglas, 
the red-brown squirrel he could never catch, 
but who was always running right across his 
trail till it seemed the easiest thing in the 
world to nab him, only that some way Doug- 
8 


THE CUBS LEARN TO SWIM 9 

las always managed to leap beyond reach 
just in the nick of time. Douglas claimed 
that the woods belonged to him and that the 
bears were trespassing on his domain, and 
from the safety of some limb too small for 
a bear cub, he would hurl jeers and insult¬ 
ing challenges at Chinook. 

“That’s because he’s afraid of us,” 
Mother Brown Bear told her son. ‘ ‘ Doug¬ 
las is bluffing. He knows that bears are 
fond of having squirrel for supper.” 

For a while after the Boy had passed out 
of sight, the cubs were allowed to practise 
walking on the fallen logs. When they fell 
off, they were so fat and so round, and the 
moist ground so soft, that it did not hurt 
them. Besides, the moment they felt them¬ 
selves slipping, they could put out their 
claws and cling to the rough bark. By and 
by the Boy returned along the way he had 
come, but by this time Mother Brown Bear 
had led the cubs far up the gulch to where 
a spot of sunshine invited a cat nap. Even 
as she dozed, she kept one eye half open, and 


10 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

one ear cocked for the slightest sound be¬ 
yond the calling of nestling birds and the 
barking and scrambling of noisy Douglas 
and his family, and the tinkling of the wee 
cascades that led to the river. The cubs 
rolled and tumbled over her, or coasted off 
her huge back, boxed and wrestled and 
played hide and seek, or came up to pat her 
huge, furry face with little love pats. 

It was a warm day, and when she had had 
her nap and the cubs their milk, and a nap 
of their own, and the sun threw her shadow 
directly beneath her, she decided that it 
would be a good time to teach them to swim. 
For woods babies were likely any time to 
fall into the water, and if there were any pos¬ 
sible way of getting into trouble, Chinook, 
especially, was sure to find it. 

“Come !” she bade them with an affection¬ 
ate soft rumble deep in her throat, and she 
led the way down to the little river and on to 
where it spread out shallowly over gravelly 
banks and the sun took some of the chill out 
of the water. Mother Brown Bear waded 


THE CUBS LEARN TO SWIM 11 

in slowly. Chinook tried first one fore paw, 
then the other, in this strange new element 
that was not air, though one could see 
straight through it to the pebbly ground be¬ 
neath. Snookie backed off, whimpering. 
“Come on!” commanded Mother Brown 
Bear. ‘ ‘ Follow me . 99 

Chinook, less fearful than his sister, but 
still wary, because of the coldness and the 
strange wetness of it, followed for a few 
steps, then ran splashing back to shore, 
where he stood shaking first one foot, then 
another with a shower of sparkling drops. 

“Snookie, come here!” ordered Mother 
Brown Bear. But Snookie only whim¬ 
pered. ‘ ‘ Chinook, show your sister that you 
are not afraid,” she coaxed, and Chinook, 
with a show of bravado, waded in. But the 
instant the water was deep enough to start 
lifting him off his feet, he turned in a panic 
and again dashed madly back to solid 
ground. 

“Snookie!” called Mother Brown Bear, 
wading back to shore, “climb on my back.” 


12 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

This the smaller cub willingly did. She 
liked to ride on Mother’s back, hanging on 
to the long fur with her handlike paws. 
“Come, Chinook!” and Mother Brown Bear 
waded back into the river with both young¬ 
sters gleefully taking a ride. As she went 
in deeper, Snookie looked back at the reced¬ 
ing shore line, and clung faster to her moth¬ 
er’s fur. Still deeper went their chariot, 
till at last it reached deep water. “Now 
swim!” commanded their mother, and with 
a suddenness that unseated them, she made 
a dive and shook them from her back, then 
turned and paddled to shore without once 
heeding Snookie’s strangling squeal for 
help. 

The cubs naturally struggled wildly to 
find a footing, and as they pawed and clawed 
about, their legs worked the same way as 
when they ran, which was just the way they 
ought to have worked. Then they discov¬ 
ered that by spreading their legs even wider 
and scooping at the water with their paws, 
they could do better still. Their vigorous 


THE CUBS LEARN TO SWIM 


13 


paddling not only served to keep their noses 
above water, but Chinook, less frightened 
than his twin, turned his eyes to where his 
mother stood waiting on the river hank, and 
struck out towards her with all his might. 
Snookie, seeing his wee stub of a tail near 
her jaws, grabbed hold and let him tow her, 
and soon they had their feet once more on 
the gravelly shore. Puffing and panting, 
and dripping chilly drops, the cubs would 
have rested, but that Mother Brown Bear 
set off on a gallop into the woods. 

“Wait for me!” squealed Snookie. 

“Wait!” panted Chinook, and the cubs 
galloped after her. Why was Mother so 
unkind today? 


CHAPTER III 

THE CALIFORNIA LION 

M OTHER BROWN BEAR had a rea¬ 
son for running away and making the 
cubs follow, for by the time she was willing 
to stop, their shivering bodies were all in a 
glow of warmth, and what with a few good 
shakings of her wet fur, and a little help 
from their mother’s rough tongue, and the 
sunny June breeze, they were soon dry and 
fluffy, and ready for anything. 

The next day Mother Brown Bear again 
took them swimming, and they found they 
liked it. The day after, she decided to go 
fishing, for the streams were full of trout, 
and she loved trout even better than the 
roots and mushrooms that she could find 
near home. This time she towed the cubs 
across the river. Chinook took her stub of 
a tail in his teeth to help him as he swam, 
and Snookie took his tail. 


14 


THE CALIFORNIA LION 


15 


When they had reached the riffles where 
the fishing was good, Mother Brown Bear 
simply stood there like a floating log with 
one barbed paw held under water, ready to 
spear any fish that swam too near. With 
her sharp claws she could impale the slip¬ 
pery fellows, and toss them to shore, where 
the cubs sat watching. They still drank 
milk, but with their sharp little teeth they 
sampled everything their mother ate, to see 
what it was like. They were having great 
fun this afternoon. In the clear water they 
could see the shining bodies of the finny ones 
darting along, and taking Mother Black 
Bear for just a big brown log. Then she 
would send a fish flapping to shore, and the 
cubs would try to catch the slippery fellow. 

The three bears had started late that day, 
and it was getting on towards sunset. The 
high peaks to the westward had already 
cut off the ruddy globe of light and left deep 
shadows creeping upon them, when Mother 
Brown Bear, crunching her fish on the river 
bank, caught a strange message on the wind 


16 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

that swept downstream. Her nose began to 
wriggle. 

‘ l 'What is it?” questioned Chinook softly 
through his nose. 

“Hush!” breathed Mother Brown Bear, 
and the fur rose along her spine, as her 
nerves tensed with anger. The cubs, feeling 
her mood, crept closer, the fur rising fright¬ 
ened along their tiny spines. 

Away down along the river bank a mov¬ 
ing gray-brown shadow stirred the salmon- 
berry bushes and made a faint lapping sound 
as it drank at a pool. As the night wind 
blew to their inquiring nostrils, it tele¬ 
graphed that here was a huge foe. It told 
Mother Brown Bear distinctly that down 
there, fishing, was Cougar, the California 
mountain lion, most dreaded of all her ene¬ 
mies. She might have stood him off in sin¬ 
gle combat, had he ever been so rash as to 
attack a grown bear, but here were the cubs, 
so little and helpless! The only reason Cou¬ 
gar would ever have for coming near would 
be if he wanted bear cub for breakfast. 


THE CALIFORNIA LION 


17 


Many moons ago, while exploring a distant 
mountain range, she had seen him lying in 
wait for rabbits, and when she located her 
den in the gulch, she had supposed that he 
still lived many miles from the spot. But 
here he was, as she could see by peering from 
behind a boulder, crouched on the shelving 
bank of the river with one paw dangling, 
barbed and ready to spear a fish. Perhaps 
it had been a poor rabbit year and he had 
moved into her territory. That would never 
do! From now on, she must keep close 
watch of the cubs. Perhaps he need never 
learn that she had these furry children to 
protect. If they went quietly now down¬ 
stream, with the wind blowing from him to 
them, they might cross the river lower down. 
Then if he should cross their trail, he would 
lose their scent at the point where they en¬ 
tered the water. But once let the giant cat 
learn of the den by the cascades, and he 
would be watching it, like a cat at a mouse 
hole, for the first moment when she had to 
leave her children unprotected. 


18 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

Now a bear, for all his weight, can pad 
along as softly as any other mouser when he 
wants to, and this time, at least, the little 
family got safely home without discovery. 
But when the great, tawny-brown cat had 
caught his supper and eaten it, he decided to 
see what might be farther downstream, and 
thus he happened upon the bear-scented 
foot-prints that the three had left behind 
them. 

“Ah, ha!” sniffed Cougar, who was longer 
than a man is tall. “ Juicy, tender young 
bear cubs! Just wait till I can catch one! 
iWhat a feast it will be!” and he licked his 
whiskered lips in pleased anticipation. 

But when he came to the point where the 
bears had crossed the river, he lost their 
trail, and though he sniffed about for a long 
time, he could not find what had become of 
them. Cats hate getting wet, and he 
wouldn’t have swum the river except in a 
real emergency. 

Now it happened that the Ranger was 
after that very mountain lion, for Cougar 


THE CALIFORNIA LION 19 

had been killing elk and deer, and these 
were Uncle Sam’s woods, where deer are 
protected except for a little while each fall. 
But when Cougar had moved from his old 
den on the other side of the mountain, the 
Ranger had lost track of him. 

One day, though, the Ranger’s Boy, on his 
way over the Pass with a pack-horse to the 
Logging Camp where they bought flour and 
coffee, heard something that sounded almost 
like a man sawing wood. It was away off 
up the mountainside. The Boy listened, 
and if his mother hadn’t expected him back 
by supper time, he would have climbed the 
slope to see who it could be. If he had 
done so, he wouldn’t have caught so much 
as a glimpse of the purring lion, who would 
have run at the first whiff of a human being. 
But if the Boy had had his father’s pocket 
telescope with him, he would have seen, 
stretched out flat on a shelving rock ledge, 
which his fur almost matched, the long, slen¬ 
der, pantherlike animal, as heavy as a grown 
man, with his small head nodding drowsily 


20 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

in the sunshine because he had been up all 
night exploring. And in his dreams Cou¬ 
gar licked his lips, for he was dreaming of 
nosing out the den where Mother Brown 
Bear had her cubs. 


CHAPTER IV 

THE HOME IN THE SQUIRREL’S NEST 

T^\OUGLAS, the squirrel, whose fur just 
matched the red-brown tree trunks, 
was as saucy as his eastern cousins, the red 
squirrels. He had been named after a fa¬ 
mous explorer, just as Chinook was named 
for the Indians who lived in that part of 
Oregon. 

It used to seem to the little hear as if the 
squirrel took delight in teasing him, while 
so surely as Chinook tried to slip away and 
hide from his mother, Douglas was sure to 
spy out his hiding place from some branch 
overhead, and chatter and scream about it 
for all the woods to hear. Then with a 
“catch-me-if-you-can” sort of challenge, he 
would go whisking almost under the cub’s 
nose, and away. Chinook would go racing 

after him, for he, as well as Douglas, could 
21 


22 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

climb trees as easily as a cat. His sharp 
claws clung to the bark even better than 
Mother Brown Bear’s. But always the 
squirrel was too quick for him. Then when 
the little bear would give it up and back his 
way to the ground, Douglas would come and 
perch on a limb just out of reach, and hurl 
saucy threats at him, or race up and down 
and around the tree trunk, his tail jerking 
with his wrath. “These are my woods,” he 
was always asserting. “My pine cones! 
My mushrooms! Go away!” At which 
Chinook would retort: “I’ll eat you alive, 
if you don’t look out!” 

Then Douglas would seat himself away 
out on some slender branch where Chinook 
could not have reached him, had he tried, 
and taking a pine cone up in his handlike 
paws, he would nibble it around and around, 
and eat the delicious kernels, while the little 
bear’s mouth watered for a taste, then throw 
the empty cone down on his head. 

The day after their fishing trip, Mother 
Brown Bear decided that if Cougar was any- 


THE HOME IN THE SQUIRREL’S NEST 23 

where about, they had better stay at home, 
where in an emergency she could order the 
cubs into the den and stand guard over them. 
Chinook, having nothing better to do, there¬ 
fore decided to catch Douglas if it were pos¬ 
sible for him to do so. 

Away up in the yellow pine above the den 
was a great mass of sticks and moss and 
dried pine needles that looked as if it might 
be Douglas’ nest. In fact, he had often 
seen the squirrel run into that very tree. He 
did not know that Douglas and his family 
had just built a larger nest in a taller tree, 
for a bear’s little eyes are not so good as his 
nose for telling what is going on about him. 
Today, sure enough, Douglas ran up the 
trunk of the yellow pine with his cheeks 
stuffed full of mushroom that he meant to 
put away for a rainy day. Chinook scram¬ 
bled after him. But Douglas, instead of go¬ 
ing to the nest, only leapt to the limb of the 
neighboring spruce, and from it to a tree 
beyond. Chinook determined, so long as he 
was up there, to have a look at the nest. 


24 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

Now it happened that Mrs. Rufus Tree 
Mouse had moved into the nest that Douglas 
had abandoned. The little red mouse peered 
with frightened eyes at the advancing cub, 
then with a soft “hush!” to her babies, she 
cuddled them up in a warm ball away inside 
in the innermost chamber of her new house, 
and waited, trembling, to see what the cub 
would do. Chinook, finding the nest appar¬ 
ently deserted, though alluring, mousy odors 
clung to it, decided to curl up in the crotch 
of a limb where he could see if Douglas came 
back, and so comfortably was he lodged in 
the hammocking crevice, and so drowsy did 
the stillness of the noonday warmth make 
him feel, that the first thing Mrs. Rufus 
knew, the little bear was fast asleep, right 
there, as it were, in her front yard. 

“Dear me,” she whispered to Father Tree 
Mouse, when he came home with a mouthful 
of soft lichen for the nursery walls. “Here 
is that bear cub, right where he can see us if 
we so much as peek from the door, and there 


THE HOME IN THE SQUIRREL’S NEST 25 

is nothing to prevent his tearing the nest to 
pieces and eating us all alive.” 

“I haven’t forgotten how to run,” soothed 
Father Tree Mouse. 

4 4 Nor I. But what about the babies ? We 
could only take two of them with us. We’d 
have to leave two behind.” 

44 That isn’t what I meant,” explained 
Father Tree Mouse, 44 Don’t worry! The 
minute that monster wakes, I’ll run out 
along that lower limb in plain sight, and 
he’ll be so eager to catch me that he’ll never 
look your way.” 

4 4 All right, then you keep watch while I 
feed the babies and get them to sleep. If 
they keep squealing this way, they’ll wake 
him, sure,” and the little red mouse began 
nursing her mouselets as a cat does her 
kittens. 

She was thinking, what a shame to have to 
move, just as they had lined walls and floor 
so daintily. The squirrel family had laid a 
good, firm foundation of sticks too large for 


26 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

a mouse to handle, and the roof was as tight 
and dry as new by the time they had plas¬ 
tered it. From their post away up among 
the high interlacing branches, they could run 
from one tree to the next and need never go 
down to the ground at all if they didn’t want 
to, for they could find all the pine twig bark 
and—on the tree next door, all the nice, 
green spruce needles that they could eat. 
Father Tree Mouse had been sleeping in a 
little shack of his own, out on the end of the 
branch, ever since the babies had come, from 
there he could see all that went on around 
them, and put his mate on her guard by 
sounding a signal squeak. 

Chinook stirred in his sleep, and the little 
mother trembled. Would Father Tree 
Mouse be able to do as he had planned when 
that monstrous cub awoke ? 


CHAPTER V 

MR. AND MRS. TREE MOUSE 


N OW as anyone understands who knows 
much about meadow mice, they nest on 
the ground, and they are the one kind of 
game a bear can always count on when the 
roots and berries are all gone and the trout 
streams frozen. 

Once upon a time, ever and ever so many 
thousands of years ago, there was a mouse 
who was wiser than the rest. When bears 
and bobcats pursued her, she took refuge 
in the tree tops. One night it seemed as if 
every creature in the woods was after her, 
and when she had reached the snug crotch of 
a high limb where she could hide from them, 
she decided it was wiser to stay there all 
night. The next morning for breakfast she 
sampled the bark, and to her surprise, found 
the flavor first rate. Then she began to ask 
herself why she need ever come down at all. 
27 


28 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

She trilled for her mate, for she had a sweet 
little birdlike voice when she sang, and they 
discussed the situation. They had just been 
thinking of building a nest where the babies 
would be safe when they came, and they fi¬ 
nally decided to build it away .up high in 
the tree. 

Those babies, after having grown up in 
the tree top, saw no reason why they should 
go back to the ground either, and they too 
built homes in the tree tops, so high that 
bears and bobcats never thought of looking 
for them there. Where before they had 
eaten grass and other things that they could 
find on the ground, now they nibbled bark 
and spruce fans, and the tender butt ends of 
the pine needles. That way the whole tribe 
came to live in trees. Their relatives who 
had stayed on the ground all got caught, and 
there were only the families of those who 
had become arboreal. Now their neighbors 
were birds and squirrels, and when they 
wanted to go exploring, they could run out 
along one branch till it crossed the branch of 


MR. AND MRS. TREE MOUSE 


29 


another tree. In time Mother Nature 
changed their little furry coats from the 
gray-brown of the soil to the red-brown of 
the Oregon tree trunks, so that their enemies 
could not see them when they crouched 
along the limbs. She changed their teeth to 
stronger ones that could gnaw the bark more 
easily, and she gave them the kind of eyes 
that can see in the dark, because when the 
pretty little fellows went to feeding among 
the greenery, their rufous coats showed up 
too plainly by daylight. Finally their Great 
Mother found that they needed longer tails 
than they had on the ground, to help them 
keep their balance when they had to leap 
from branch to branch. And after Mother 
Nature had done all that for them, they 
found that they were so safe that they could 
build great, roomy nests in the very tree 
tops, where they could raise their children. 
Sometimes they found an abandoned squir¬ 
rel’s nest that made a first rate framework, 
and converted it into a palace of many 
rooms. These they carpeted beautifully 


30 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

with cedar fans and bits of dry moss and 
lichen for the babies to creep around on. 
The young bachelor mice were generally 
satisfied with one-room cabins away out on 
the tips of the limbs where they could come 
and go as they pleased, but as the young peo¬ 
ple became more experienced in nest build¬ 
ing, and as they found that they needed 
larger quarters, they would often build a 
whole colony of nests around some tree 
trunk, with the different apartments resting 
on different branches, but with one main 
hallway that ran around the trunk so that 
they could visit back and forth without go¬ 
ing out of doors. As the dust blew over 
these nests of sticks and spruce fans, and 
the rain moistened the dust, and the seeds of 
tiny plants blew on this rich soil, the apart¬ 
ment house would come to look like a bit of 
the ground beneath, and on cold nights the 
thick walls would keep out the rain and the 
wind and make it all as snug and homelike 
as anything you can imagine. 

That is how Mr. and Mrs. Tree Mouse 


MR. AND MRS. TREE MOUSE 31 

came to be living so high above the ground, 
in the branches of this great pine tree. They 
really preferred spruce, because the bark 
has a better flavor, and, too, because most of 
their friends lived in the spruce trees; but 
when Douglas, the squirrel, had abandoned 
this great, roomy nest, it had seemed like too 
good a bargain to let go, and they had 
promptly moved in. 

They were really awfully frightened when 
they saw Chinook come scrambling so near, 
for they had heard him tell Douglas how he 
would eat him alive if he ever caught him. 
The pretty little red mother mouse had just 
gotten her four babies asleep when Chinook 
finished his nap, and with a yawn and a 
stretch, began looking about him to see 
where he was. 

Now was the time for Father Tree Mouse 
to distract his attention, for any moment, the 
cub might start investigating the nest. With 
a high-pitched little squeak, the brave mite 
started to run along the limb just below, but 
he scuttled so fast that Chinook decided it 


32 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

was no use trying to catch him, and just sat 
there blinking sleepily in the sunshine. At 
that, Father Tree Mouse came back, and 
this time he pretended to have a broken leg, 
which made him limp along so slowly that 
even Chinook might have caught him. Just 
barely out of reach of the little bear’s barbed 
paw, Father Tree Mouse limped down the 
tree trunk and out along the limb. This 
time the cub ran after him so fast that 
Father Mouse’s heart thumped with terror. 
But he must get that bear clear out of their 
tree, and at last he dropped to the ground 
and raced madly across an open space to an¬ 
other tree, with Chinook close at his heels. 
His ruse was working altogether too well, 
for the little bear all but clapped his paw on 
him once. He did get the tip of his long 
tail. But Father Tree Mouse remembered 
a knothole he had seen one day when out ex¬ 
ploring, and straight for that knothole he 
darted, tumbling into it not an instant too 
soon. For a time Chinook watched the 
knothole for him to come out, but by and by 


MR. AND MRS. TREE MOUSE 33 

his mother called him, and when he came 
back, Father Tree Mouse had left and gone 
back home. 

“Do you know,” he told Mother Tree 
Mouse, “we ought to find some nice, big 
knothole and move into it before that bear 
comes back.” And before another night 
had passed, they had found one, and moved 
the babies. 


CHAPTER VI 


MAZAMA THE MYSTERIOUS 

S OMETIMES in the black of night, the 
cubs would be awakened by a weird, un¬ 
earthly screech, but peer as they might from 
the mouth of their den into the shadowy 
woods they could never see what manner of 
creature it could be. When they asked 
Mother Brown Bear, she said it would be 
better for them to watch and find out for 
themselves. Mother Brown Bear wanted 
them to learn to use their wits for they were 
going to need them, in their life of hunting 
and being hunted. 

Sometimes the cubs thought they saw two 
great round eyes gleaming at them in the 
moonlight, high up in the branches of a tree. 
Weird voice and gleaming eyes, that was 
their first impression of Mazama the Mys¬ 
terious, whose hunting call startled every 

mouse till its trembling set the grasses wav- 
34 


MAZAMA THE MYSTERIOUS 35 

ing and showed Mazama where it was hid¬ 
ing. 

One night Mother Brown Bear decided to 
take Snookie and Chinook on a mousing ex¬ 
pedition. Now the mice which were her fa¬ 
vorite game were the stupid burrow mice 
who live in tunnels underground and often 
destroy whole crops for the farmers. The 
forest floor is threaded with these tunnels, 
whose entrances are hidden beneath stumps 
and fallen logs, or come out beneath over¬ 
hanging rocks; and the moment danger 
threatens, into one of these tunnels they will 
pop, and run and run, away down under¬ 
neath the sod. But a bear’s sharp nose can 
smell a mouse even when it is hiding under¬ 
ground, and if he cannot catch it in the open, 
he can sometimes dig it out, though he has 
to be pretty spry, because while he is digging 
at one point, the mouse may be running to 
some other branch of his tunnel. That night 
Mother Brown Bear wasn’t so anxious to 
catch mice herself as she was to teach the 
cubs. But though Snookie and Chinook 


36 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

raced joyously after every red-backed bur¬ 
row mouse they saw, till they had chased 
them all into their secret tunnels, they 
caught not one of the fleet-footed fellows. 

By and by the great, round, yellow moon 
peeped into the pine woods. Suddenly a 
weird, unearthly cry shivered through the 
air, and the cubs shrank trembling against 
their mother. It was Mazama the Mysteri¬ 
ous. 44 Watch, now!” whispered Mother 
Brown Bear. 4 4 You’ll soon find out what 
you’ve been afraid of.” Then across the 
opening between the tall tree trunks swept 
a gray shape as soundlessly as a shadow. It 
was nothing but a bird, a round-eyed Barn- 
Owl, though with a beak as sharp as a scimi¬ 
tar and great curved claws like swords. A 
mouse came to the door of his tunnel right 
beneath the huge gray bird, and feeling as 
if the great eyes were upon him, made a dash 
for a better hiding place, but with one swift 
dart the owl had set his beak in him and was 
winging his silent way to the limb of a tree, 
where he held the mouse down with one talon 


MAZAMA THE MYSTERIOUS 37 

while he ate him alive, and at the despairing 
squeak of his victim, every burrow mouse 
within earshot told himself: “ Thank good¬ 

ness, I’m not in his skin!” But because 
they had very little brains, they started right 
out into the open again to hunt their sup¬ 
pers, and the next thing they knew, Mazama 
had caught another of them. While the 
three bears watched, he swooped again and 
again on his silent wings at the mice he could 
see so plainly with his great round eyes. 
So this, thought Chinook, was what had 
frightened him,—only a bird! There is 
nothing like looking a terror straight in the 
face. 

Just as Mother Brown Bear was ready to 
start for home, another terrifying sound 
pierced the stillness, and it was startlingly 
near. The sound came from behind them, 
and the breeze was in the wrong direction to 
tell them what it was. It was the screech¬ 
ing, catlike voice that betrayed its owner. 
“Is it Cougar?” trembled Snookie. 

“No, come and I’ll show you who it is,” 


38 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

and Mother Brown Bear began circling till 
they could approach the newcomer with the 
wind in their faces. Chinook wriggled his 
nose inquiringly. “It’s a cat, even if it 
isn’t Cougar,” he decided. 

“Yes, it’s a cat, hut no one we need be 
afraid of. It’s Paddy-paws, the bobcat. 
He’s a great mouser. Better watch him: 
you can learn a lot from the way he goes 
about it,” Mother Brown Bear told them 
softly. 

“He might catch us too,” shivered 
Snookie, clutching at her mother with both 
arms. 

“Not now that you’ve grown as big as he 
is.” 

“Is he a good fighter, Mother?” asked Chi¬ 
nook. 

“He can put up one of the best fights of 
any animal of his size, if his life or his 
kittens are in danger. But he never courts 
trouble, and he will leave you alone if you 
leave him alone.” 

“Huh!” sniffed Chinook. “I’ll bet he 


MAZAMA THE MYSTERIOUS 39 

isn’t any better mouser than I’m going to 
be.” 

“Don’t boast,” said Mother Brown Bear. 
“It would be better to watch and see how he 
does it.” 

“Is he a better mouser than Mazama?” 

“Watch and see,” was all Mother Brown 
Bear would tell them. 

Once when the Ranger’s Boy had caught 
a glimpse of Paddy-paws crouched along the 
limb of a tree, he had at first taken him for 
merely the largest and handsomest tiger cat 
he had ever seen. “Pussy, pussy!” he had 
called ingratiatingly, wondering how a house 
cat came to be in the woods. 

“P-f-f-f!” had hissed Paddy-paws, leap¬ 
ing away to another tree. Then the Boy had 
seen how his tail was bobbed, and his ears 
pointed, and how large his paws were, and 
how wildly his yellow eyes gleamed. 

“You’re certainly not very friendly,” 
thought the Boy, “but I suppose it’s because 
you’re afraid. You are trying to frighten 
me with all that hissing.” 


40 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

At first the cubs could only see that some¬ 
thing moved stealthily, body held close to 
the ground, through the shadows of the tree 
trunks. Then as the big cat pounced on a 
mouse, they could see that he was a hand¬ 
some, tawny fellow with spots on his sides. 
Then Mazama gave another screech. 

The bobcat answered with an angry yowl. 
“Keep out of my hunting grounds!” he 
yelled at Mazama, and began sniffing about 
till he discovered a big mouse hole. 
Crouched there ready to pounce the minute 
its tenant showed his face, his attention was 
distracted by another mouse, who ran across 
the open, and with one leap he was upon it 
with a pitiless barbed paw. But Mazama 
had also been after that mouse, and the 
same instant Paddy caught it by the tail, the 
great owl snapped his beak in the mouse’s 
neck. 

“Pht-t-t!” warned Paddy-paws. “That’s 
my mouse. Let go!” and he slapped with 
his free paw at the bird. Mazama gave a 
hoot of rage and slashed at the bobcat with 


MAZAMA THE HT 5 TEE IOCS 


41 


one foot as he raised his wings and sailed 
away, bearing the bone of contention in hi3 
beak. The cat had a red scratch down one 
ear. That punishing claw had come very 
near his face. But he also clutched a hand¬ 
ful of owl feathers. 

“How much better,” pointed out Mother 
Brown Bear, “not to have scrapped over 
one miserable mouse. Now they’re both 
hurt. And there are a million mice left to 
catch.” 

Paddv-paws ran away into the shadows, 
perhaps to massage, with moistened paw, 
the stinging scratch on his ear. 

“He’s feeling real scrappy tonight,” 
laughed Chinook. “But he sure is ‘some 

9 99 


mouser. 



CHAPTER VII 


LOST IN THE FOG 


UGUST came, with its hot sun and the 



-*** salt-smelling white fog from the ocean. 
Mother Brown Bear decided to take the 
cubs on a trip high among the cool mountain 
peaks. “You know Chinook means snow- 
eater,’ ’ she told her son. “We must see if 
the name fits. When the warm West winds 
come in spring and melt the snow, the In¬ 
dians call it the Chinook. And when the 
first of their tribe named himself, he took a 
bite of snow. They even call these big sal¬ 
mon that come from the sea to spawn the 
Chinook salmon, because every spring they 
swim so far up these icy streams.” 

“Snow would taste good today,” panted 
the little bear, “but I thought it only came 
in winter.” 

“Away up on the high peaks,” his mother 


42 


LOST IN THE FOG 


43 


told him , 16 there is snow all the year around. 
But you are going to see even more exciting 
things than summer snow before we have 
finished our trip.” 

It was strange, starting out in the fog. 
Though the gray mist shut off all the way 
before him, and Chinook could hardly see a 
tree trunk right ahead, he could tell it 
was there by the message his wonderful lit¬ 
tle nose gave him. He could tell even better 
in this moist air than he had been able to in 
dry weather, and he could tell the difference 
between a pine tree and a spruce tree as eas¬ 
ily as the Ranger’s Boy could have told, 
with his eyes shut, whether they were going 
to have onions or cabbage for dinner. 

The woods were strangely still today. 
The birds had little heart to sing when, for 
all they could see, some enemy might be 
creeping up behind them; for birds have to 
depend on their eyes more than their noses. 
As the cubs padded along after their mother, 
the scent of whose warm fur led the way, 
Chinook paused to sniff a delicious odor that 


44 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

was new to him. Following his nose, he 
presently came to a swampy place where his 
feet sank into the moist ground and his face 
was brushed by tiger lilies. Now a lily 
means something very different to a bear 
from what it does to a bee or a boy. It 
was the onionlike bulbs at their roots that 
interested Mother Brown Bear’s young 
hopeful. It was the lily he had smelled, and 
that made his mouth water. In another in¬ 
stant, without once calling to tell his mother 
what had become of him, he started digging 
them up with his claws and gobbling them 
down, till his furry face was streaked with 
mud and his sides were rounded. 

After he had eaten all the lily bulbs he 
could possibly hold, he began to wonder if 
his mother and Snookie were waiting for 
him. More likely they had not even missed 
him. Now his stomach, which was used to 
very little besides the warm milk from which 
he had not yet been weaned, began hurting 
dreadfully. The little bear whimpered, but 
he didn’t dare make much of a noise after 


LOST IN THE FOG- 


45 


what his mother had told him about Cougar, 
the California lion, and his fondness for 
having bear cub for breakfast. On all sides 
Chinook could see nothing but gray fog. 
My, how his stomach ached! And he was 
lost from the great, wise mother who always 
knew how to make his troubles disappear. 
What if Cougar were hiding there in the 
fog, ready to pounce upon him as Paddy- 
paws pounced on the mice ? Slowly it came 
to him that there was no one to come to the 
rescue, unless he rescued himself, and he set 
his wits to work. Why, of course! Why 
hadn’t he thought before that all he had to 
do was to follow his own trail back to where 
it crossed the one his mother had left for him 
to follow! For a bear, like most four-footed 
folk, has little scent glands in his feet, and 
everywhere he goes, he leaves a trace of his 
own peculiar perfume on the ground. It 
isn’t often strong enough for a boy to de¬ 
tect, but a cat, or a dog, or a bear, or a mouse 
can tell it easily. So around and around 
went the little lost bear, retracing every step 


46 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

of the way he had come through the mystic 
maze that was the lily swamp, till at last he 
came out on the trail where Mother Brown 
Bear had left her big footprints. With a 
happy squeal he raced ahead. His mother 
was just coming hack for him; but to his 
hurt surprise she only gave him a sound 
spank with her paw, and growled for him 
to come along, quick! But when he told her 
about the stomach ache, she stopped and 
hunted around with her nose in the fog until 
she had found a certain little red mushroom. 
“Eat that,” she told him, “and you’ll soon 
feel better.” 

Chinook obediently bit off the top of the 
toadstool, but instantly wished he hadn’t, 
for it had the most puckery, peppery taste, 
not at all like those he had sampled before. 
He didn’t want to swallow such medicine, 
but she insisted. Then for a few minutes he 
felt worse than ever. But as soon as he got 
over feeling seasick and the lily bulbs had 
come up the way they had gone down, he be¬ 
gan to feel better. But it was a meek little 


LOST IN THE FOG 


47 


bear who promised never again to sample 
anything his mother had not told him to eat. 

For a while the cubs raced merrily along, 
while Mother Brown Bear kept up a lively 
clip. But as they climbed more and more 
steeply over the canyon walls, their feet felt 
heavier and their breath came shorter. 
After a while they reached an altitude where 
the fog did not follow, but lay like a cloud 
in the canyon beneath them. Up here, 
above the fog belt, the sun was shining, birds 
were singing, and the world was bright with 
the green of fir trees and the pink and blue 
of wild flowers that had a mild sweetish 
taste. Puffy white clouds sailed slowly 
across the deep blue of the sky, and the air 
was so cool and bracing that the cubs for¬ 
got their fatigue and started playing tag. 

Then a terrifying thing happened. The 
ground, which had always been so firm be¬ 
neath their feet, began to rock with a side- 
wise motion that fairly made them dizzy. 
One long quiver, and the earth ceased quak¬ 
ing, but it was their first earthquake, and 


48 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

the cubs did not know what might happen 
next. Their mother explained it to them. 

Away down deep underground, she told 
them, it was not solid rock and earth, but 
steam from the subterranean fires that some¬ 
times spouted out of the volcanic peaks. It 
was this steam that made the ground rock, 
out there on the Pacific Coast. Once within 
her memory there had been a mountain, that 
white-topped one they could see far ahead, 
that had spouted red fire into the night, for 
it was a volcano, and there had been an erup¬ 
tion. And even though that had happened 
a hundred miles away, it had shaken the 
ground so hard (there had been such a big 
earthquake) that the rocks had gone sliding 
down the mountainsides with a noise like 
thunder, and in some places the earth had 
cracked right open for ever so many feet. 

“Will that ever happen again?” asked 
Snookie, her eyes round with awe. 

“What has happened once may always 
happen again,” was all Mother Brown Bear 
could tell her. “If we do have a big earth- 


LOST IN THE FOG 


49 


quake, we must run right out into the open, 
because it may shake our den to pieces.’’ 

Little did she dream that the day might 
come when the cubs would be glad to remem¬ 
ber her advice. 


CHAPTER VIII 


TEAM WORK 


S the three hears crossed the shallow 



head of the river, whose course they 
had been following up the mountainsides, 
from the grass almost under their feet 
leapt what at first glimpse they took to be a 
mammoth mouse. 

Of course they chased it. Soon they no¬ 
ticed that it ran very differently from the 
mice they had known. Instead of scuttling 
along on all fours, with its long tail stream¬ 
ing out behind, this one gave mammoth 
leaps, and its tail was just a bunch of brown 
fur. Then they noticed what long ears it 
had, and what broad hind feet. “It’s a 
hare,” signalled Mother Brown Bear, “a 
‘snowshoe rabbit.’ ” 

The big brown hare raced so fast that it 
was soon out of sight; then instead of stay- 


50 


TEAM WORK 


51 


ing safely away, back it came circling, to 
stand on its bind legs with its long ears 
pointed forward to catch the sounds these 
strange newcomers were making, and its 
paws folded on its furry chest. The minute 
it caught sight of the pursuing cubs, it leapt 
away again with such great bounds that the 
bears again lost sight of it. 

“You’d never catch it that way in a mil¬ 
lion years,’’ Mother Brown Bear laughed, 
her black eyes twinkling as the cubs 
returned. 

“Why not?” Chinook demanded. “Let’s 
wait until it comes back, and have another 
try.” 

“I don’t mind resting here a while,” said 
Mother Brown Bear, seating herself with 
her back to a rock and her legs straight out 
in front of her, while the cubs sprawled out 
in the sunshine. Up here so high above 
their woods, where the wind was cool, the 
sun felt good on their fur. 

“In chasing a hare,” Mother Brown Bear 
told them, “you never want to follow right 


52 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

along in its tracks, because it can generally 
outrun you.” 

“I thought you said it was a rabbit,” said 
Snookie. 

“They call this one a snowshoe rabbit,” her 
mother explained, “but it’s really a hare, a 
snowshoe hare. You see how broad its feet 
are. In winter when there is snow on the 
mountainsides, its wide furry feet keep it on 
the tops of the drifts, where an animal with 
slender feet sinks in. In creeping up on a 
hare, you can sometimes pounce the way a 
bobcat pounces on a mouse, but that is only 
possible when the wind’s in your face 
(blowing from the hare to you) and it’s 
curled up asleep and doesn’t see you. If 
the wind blows from you to the hare, it gets 
your scent, and takes warning. Then re¬ 
member, you can’t make the teeniest, weeni- 
est sound or it catches it with those great, 
funnel-like ears. But where a thing is hard 
to catch in a straightaway race for it, that is 
the time to try strategy, and where one pur¬ 
suer cannot catch a supper that runs so fast, 


TEAM WORK 


53 


it is sometimes possible for partners to work 
it between them. I have seen a family of 
bobcats bring down a ‘snowshoe rabbit’ by 
careful teamwork. ’ ’ 

“Tell us about it,” begged the cubs, who 
did not see the hare looking at them from be¬ 
hind the stump, to which it had circled in its 
foolish curiosity to find out more about its 
enemies. It was wriggling its nose this way 
and that, for the wind was in its face, and 
for the moment it was safe. 

“It was a cold moonlight night,” began 
Mother Brown Bear, “when Paddy-paws 
and his mate went ‘rabbit’ hunting and took 
their five half-grown kittens along. The 
kittens were handsome, bright-eyed little 
fellows anxious to learn how to do every¬ 
thing their parents did. Well, first Paddy 
himself gave chase to a big brown hare, who 
went hopping away so fast that the heavy cat 
was all out of breath before he had come 
anywhere near his quarry. But Mrs. 
Paddy-paws had stationed the kittens 
around every here and there through the 


54 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

woods, and just as the old cat had to give it 
up for the time, she was right there ready 
to take his place. They made a regular re¬ 
lay race of it. When Mrs. Paddy-paws had 
chased the hare around in a circle and got 
so winded that she had to stop, the nearest 
kitten took up the race, and by that time 
Paddy had his breath back and cut straight 
across the circle to take the kitten’s place. 
All this time, of course, the hare was getting 
more and more worn out, but it still kept 
leaping ahead so fast that it nearly got away 
after all. Yes, sir, it took every one of those 
seven cats to catch that hare. They cer¬ 
tainly worked hard for the quick lunch that 
they got out of it, and they had to work 
harder still before they had caught enough 
to satisfy those hungry kittens. But team¬ 
work finally did it.” 

At that, the hare, whose eyes had been 
nearly popping out of his head with sur¬ 
prise, leapt away as fast as he could go. 

“Hey, Snookie,” Chinook gave his sister 


TEAM WORK 


55 


a resounding slap,“let’s try a relay race the 
next time we see a hare.” 

“All right, hut you needn’t hit so hard,” 
and Snookie landed him a biff that sent them 
tumbling downhill in a wrestling match. 

Mother Brown Bear yawned and 
stretched. “Come, children,” she bade 
them, as she rose to her feet, “we have a long 
way to go if we are to have supper in Rat 
Town.” 

At the word, the cubs went racing after 
her, and a little further on, their eyes bright- 
ened when they came to a footprint that 
looked almost like a squirrel’s but which 
smelled distinctly mousy. It was the track 
of a mountain pack-rat. The cubs sniffed 
curiously. It was a part of their schooling 
to learn the meaning of every odor, for next 
year, when they had to earn their own liv¬ 
ings, they would have to know where to find 
enough to eat, and then their noses would be 
a bigger help than eyes and ears put to¬ 
gether. 


56 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

For a few minutes they followed the trail 
of the pack-rat, which smelled stronger and 
stronger. Of a sudden, the rat himself 
darted off to the right. Mother Brown Bear 
watched to see if the cubs would profit by 
what she had just been telling them. Quick 
as thought, Snookie was after that rat. 
Quick as thought, Chinook saved his breath 
and watched to see where the race would 
lead, and when the rat began circling further 
to the right, so that the wind was in his face, 
Chinook made a dash across the circle and 
took Snookie’s place. “Good work!” 
thought Mother Brown Bear, proud that 
her children were so quick to learn. For a 
couple of minutes Chinook raced with all his 
might, but the rat ran faster. Then Snookie 
came leaping downhill to take his place as 
the rat darted past her, and just as she lost 
her balance and went tumbling head over 
ears, her brother had taken a short cut and 
was ready to take her place; and the next 
thing that old rat knew, he was flattened 
out under Chinook’s paw. 


TEAM WORK 


57 


“You see,” Mother Brown Bear told 
them, “there is nothing like team work. 
The reason a bear is so brainy is because he 
is always watching other forest folk to see 
what he can learn from them; and when cubs 
are too little to make their way alone, they 
want to stand by each other.” 

“How Mother does love to preach,” 
thought Chinook, but he didn’t dare say so, 
and the time was coming when he was glad 
to remember what she had told him. But 
if his nose was any judge, they were nearing 
the Bat Town she had promised to show 
them. 


CHAPTER IX 


RAT TOWN 

T HE village they were approaching 
looked like a toy Indian encampment, 
with its tiny tepees of sticks and trash. 

The inhabitants were not much larger 
than burrow mice, were these mountain 
pack-rats, so-called, who scurried about 
packing great armfuls of twigs and leaves 
to make their homes secure. Some of the 
tepees were built as high as Chinook’s head, 
when he stood on his hind legs, and he could 
have crawled inside, had the doorways been 
large enough. How such tiny fellows could 
build so high, he could not imagine till he 
saw half a dozen rats setting one stick in 
place with their squirrel-like paws. 

At the approach of the three bears, the 
sentinel mice, who had been sitting on their 
roof-tops, promptly stamped a warning sig- 

58 


RAT TOWN 


59 


nal, and every rat in Rat Town scampered, 
terrified, into his tent. 

i 1 Hurray! ’ ’ Chinook exulted. ‘ i Watch 
me catch them!” 

“ You ’ll not find it so easy as you might 
think,’’ his mother warned him. “They 
have none of them lost the use of their hind 
legs.” And indeed, the three bears had a 
lively time of it before Mother Brown Bear 
had satisfied her keen mountain appetite. 
Still, it was a paradise for mousers. 

That same night the Ranger’s Boy was 
having his own experience with Oregon 
pack-rats. 

The Forest Ranger, in his horseback trips 
through the mountains, found it convenient 
to have a shelter shack in the fir woods just 
beneath Lookout Peak. This time the Boy 
had gone with his father, who had to find out 
how much timber up that way was ripe for 
cutting, for a lumber company wanted to 
buy some. For the first time that summer, 
they were to spend a couple of nights at the 
cabin. To their surprise, they found that a 


60 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

family of little pack-rats had taken posses¬ 
sion in their absence. The blankets were 
chewed and pieces torn off, presumably so 
that the rat babies would have a soft bed. 
The flour that the Ranger had left in a bag 
hung from the rafters so that the porcupines 
couldn’t reach it had been spilled through a 
hole that the rats had chewed in one corner 
of the bag, for, unlike the prickly ones, the 
little rats had been able to run down the 
string as easily as so many circus acrobats. 
The lid had been lifted off the tea jar and 
the tea had been sampled, though with no 
great relish, for most of it had been left un¬ 
touched. Even as the Boy entered the 
dusky doorway, he spied three of the mouse¬ 
like gray rats, no larger than chipmunks, 
tugging with their handlike paws at the lid 
of the molasses can, which appeared to fit 
too tightly for them to manage. The dusty 
paw marks up and down its sides told that 
they must have tried it many times. At the 
Boy’s laugh, they ran, but they were bold, 
and were soon back again, working away in 


RAT TOWN 


61 


the shadows that his candle lantern threw. 

That night the Boy, who slept in a bunk 
of fir boughs opposite his father’s, was 
awakened by a great scuffling and scurrying 
over floor and roof, and once by angry 
squeaks and squeals. Another time some¬ 
thing warm and furry, with toe nails that 
tickled, ran across his forehead. A third 
time he was awakened by a resounding 
thump. It was one of his heavy hiking 
boots, which he had been advised to take to 
bed with him—for fear the rodents might 
have a relish for smoked-tanned moose hide 
smeared with neat’s-foot oil. They had 
evidently tugged at the heavy boot until they 
had hauled it over the edge of the bunk. 
The Boy watched them with one eye half 
open to see what would happen next. With 
a huge sound of scraping over the split log 
floor, the three little rats dragged the boot to 
one corner of the cabin, and there tugged 
and panted in their effort to drag it into 
their hole. The Boy, feeling assured that 
that was something they could never do, and 


62 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

knowing that they could never lift it to 
carry it away through the cabin window, 
and being in that optimistically drowsy state 
where one doesn’t care much what happens 
anyway, allowed himself to fall asleep 
again. 

In the morning he found the appropriated 
boot filled to the top with stores the little 
rats had sought to hide there. First there 
was his soap, which they had nibbled all 
around the edges with their pointed teeth. 
Next came a mixture of pine nuts, bits of 
the cold lunch the Ranger had brought in his 
saddle-bags and thrown in the cold fireplace, 
a button they had chewed from his sleeve, 
and a much-gnawed pencil, while the toe of 
the boot was stuffed with half a dozen burrs 
which they evidently treasured, and with the 
fragments of the greasy paper in which they 
had brought their breakfast bacon. As 
for the bacon itself, that was nowhere to be 
seen, though a greasy, paw-marked trail led 
up the side of the cabin wall and into a 
comer of the rafters. The tin in which they 


RAT TOWN 


63 


had stowed it for safekeeping had been 
uncovered and thoroughly decorated with 
telltale footprints. The Ranger and his 
Boy doubled with laughter. 

“ Pack-rats are a pest,” pronounced the 
Ranger, when he found his own boots, still 
safe at the foot of his bunk but nibbled all 
across the tops. “Ill take you up to an 
abandoned mining camp some day, where 
the pack-rats have taken possession of 
every cabin. With doors and windows 
boarded up so that bears and bobcats can’t 
get in, they live there, producing about four 
litters a year of perhaps four to a litter, 
till there must be thousands of them. Where 
nothing larger than a weasel can get at 
them to keep their numbers down, it’s 
destroyed the Balance of Nature. Some 
day I’d like to find the time to clear them 
out, or there will soon be such millions that 
they’ll come migrating around the settle¬ 
ments, destroying crops and doing no end of 
damage.” 

“How are you going to ‘clean them out,’ 


64 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

Dad ? Going to take the Pied Piper along ? ' ’ 
laughed the Boy. 

“All I’ll have to do, I imagine, is to 
destroy the old log cabins, because as soon 
as the hawks and owls, bears and bobcats, 
foxes and coyotes, and all the animals whose 
natural food they are, can get at them, the 
Balance will soon be restored. As for the 
Pied Piper, I don’t know if these rats care 
for music, but thank goodness, they aren’t 
the common Norway, disease-spreading rat 
of our city wharves. ‘Trade rats,’ campers 
call these little fellows, because they have a 
funny way of trading some of their trash 
for some of the food they salvage. There, 
just look at that!” and he reached for the 
butter tin, which also had been raided. It 
was half full of bark. “I suppose they 
think that kind of trade will square it with 
us.” 

“Well, they may relish bark for break¬ 
fast,” sighed the Boy, “but I’d as soon have 
bacon and butter to go with these biscuit. 
Thank goodness, I put the biscuit tin under 


RAT TOWN 


65 


a heavy weight last night. I thought I had 
placed the bacon there, too.” 

“You did,” agreed the Ranger, “but not 
under a heavy enough weight. See, they 
lifted that hardwook stick right off! You 
wouldn’t think they had the strength to, but 
I suppose it’s team work.” 

“The brazen things!” howled the Boy, 
convulsed with mirth, for one rat had just 
peeked over the edge of the table, filched a 
half biscuit from his very plate and made 
off with it, and now sat with a fragment he 
had broken off eating it as he sat up squirrel- 
wise holding the biscuit in his paws. 

“They really seem more like squirrels 
than rats,” thought the Boy aloud. He was 
noticing that instead of the coarse hair and 
naked tails of the city rat, they had soft 
gray fur and snowy under sides, with tails 
almost as thick as a ground squirrel’s. 

“They aren’t real rats,” agreed his 
father, “but mice, in spite of the name. In 
some places they have taken to nesting in 
the tree tops, and in some places they bur- 


66 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

row. They nest in the branches overhang¬ 
ing swampy places, and burrow in sandy 
plateaus. But up here in the higher alti¬ 
tudes they either live among the rocks or 
build tepees of trash.” 

“Dad, do they store food for winter?” 

“Just like squirrels, and there is one thing 
they do that is rabbitlike. I’ve seen them 
drum an alarm on the ground with their 
heels when they have to send a warning 
signal a long distance.” 

“ They ’re sure cunning rascals.” 

“Altogether too ’cute for me. I wouldn’t 
mind an occasional half pound of bacon, if 
only they wouldn’t dig up the pine seeds that 
I plant in my reforesting nurseries.” 

“They are vegetarians, mostly, aren’t 
they?” 

“Yes, and down in San Luis Potosi they 
sell them at the market stalls to be cooked 
liked rabbits. Look out! Is that your 
pocket knife that fellow’s dragging across 
your bunk?” 


HAT TOWN 


67 


The Boy made a dash for his property. 
“Can you beat it!” 

But up in Rat Town they were giving 
Chinook a merry chase. 


CHAPTER X 


A LIVE SNOWBALL 

T HE day after they visited Rat Town, 
Mother Brown Bear led the cubs high 
above the surrounding mountain slopes to 
where a sandy meadow stretched to the foot 
of snow-clad Lookout Peak. 

This eleven-thousand-foot sky-meadow 
was a riot of wild flowers. Yellow mimulas 
and purple pussy-paws carpeted the ground 
beneath their feet, while snowy slopes, blue 
in the cloud shadows, towered to the summit 
or swept in a long slope to the spruce woods 
lying dark green beneath them. The air 
was as fresh as a drink from a snow-fed 
river. 

What amazed the cubs was that great 
swarms of red and black butterflies danced 
above them. Snookie and Chinook had a 

gay time trying to catch them. Where the 
68 


A LIVE SNOWBALL 


69 


purple and white honey-lupin set their noses 
wriggling, the butterflies danced in a cloud. 
Mother Brown Bear was amazed to see but¬ 
terflies in this chill altitude, for though she 
had been a great traveller, she had always 
before found them down in the warm 
meadows where the bees gathered the honey 
that she loved. She did not know that these 
butterflies were- migrating South for the 
winter. But they had not come all this way 
to chase butterflies. 

What Mother Brown Bear liked best 
about the summer snow fields was that here 
she often found whole swarms of frozen 
grasshoppers. To hunt for this delicacy she 
now called the cubs to the foot of the nearest 
snowbank, and while she dug and sniffed 
and feasted, they lapped the strange white 
stuff that felt so cold. Then Snookie fell 
down and rolled head over heels, and to 
Chinook’s surprise, the half melted snow 
clung to her till she looked like a little white 
bear instead of a cinnamon cub. The next 
thing Mother Brown Bear knew, the cubs 


70 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

were climbing the steep snowbanks for the 
sake of coasting down. Sometimes they 
sat with feet straight out in front of them, 
but oftener they threw themselves down flat 
on their stomachs and did it ‘‘belly bumps.” 
Over and over and over they tried it, while 
their mother searched for grasshoppers, till 
she really began to worry for fear they 
might wear all their fur off. They never 
forgot the fun they had on their first snow 
slide. 

Now Chinook little dreamed that the 
Banger’s Boy who had passed them one day 
was right down there in the fir woods whose 
pointed spires he could see from an over¬ 
hanging ledge. Nor did the Boy dream that 
the roguish little bear was also off on a 
camping trip. 

Chinook, having found the snow harder on 
the northern slope and easier to slide on, 
had started off with a sturdy shove of his 
boylike hind feet and had set himself going 
so far and so fast that he couldn’t stop. On 
the warm western slope the snowbank soon 


A LIVE SNOWBALL 


71 


came to a stop, and there Snookie was con¬ 
tent to coast while her mother nosed about 
for frozen grasshoppers. But on the north¬ 
ern side it sloped in an unbroken expanse 
of hard white that glittered in the reddening 
sunlight, and never stopped until it had 
reached in a long tongue down the gulch into 
the fir woods. 

“What’s that?” exclaimed the Ranger’s 
Boy, as he and his father peered at a small 
black object darting over the snow field; 
but it went so fast that they couldn’t make 
out what was coming. 

Now the snow up above, where the chill 
winds blew, was crusted hard and firm, and 
the little hear, for it was he, just skimmed 
along as if he were on ice. But down in the 
gulch where the snow ran into the fir woods, 
the top few inches had partly melted till it 
was just sticky, and clung to the feet like 
a plaster. As Chinook reached the level 
stretch and tried to get to all fours, he only 
succeeded in turning head over heels with 
the momentum of his long slide. The next 


72 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

thing he knew, the soft snow began sticking 
to him inches deep, till, by the time he had 
stopped rolling and come to a standstill, the 
Boy would have taken him for a mammoth 
snowball if he hadn’t seen him coming. 

“Dad, I want that cub!” he shouted, strip¬ 
ping off his coat as he ran, but clinging to 
the coiled lead rope he had on his arm. 

“Leave him alone !” warned his father, 
who was leading the pack-horse; but the 
Boy had already thrown his coat over the 
struggling snowball, and the Banger raced 
to his assistance. 

Five minutes later a man and a boy, both 
scatched and bleeding but completely trium¬ 
phant, had a small and frightened and very 
angry little bear on one end of the lead rope, 
with the other end tied to a fir tree. 

“Now watch me make friends with him!” 
the Boy exulted, running to the cabin for 
something to feed his unexpected guest. 

“I’ll watch!” his father laughed, starting 
after the pack-horse. 

The Boy searched the cabin hastily. 



He turned head over heels with the momentum 
of the slide. 












A LIVE SNOWBALL 


73 


There on the top shelf stood a tightly lidded 
tin pail of brown sugar that the dampness 
had converted into one great lump. Chip¬ 
ping off a pocketful of hard lumps, the Boy 
returned to where the little bear chafed and 
struggled at the end of his leash. Had they 
not known just how to tie the knot, he would 
have choked himself. He was just beginning 
to gnaw on the rope when the Boy threw him 
a great hard lump of the sugar. Then he 
went around the corner of the cabin and 
peeked to see what would happen. 

Chinook, finding the woods as silent as if 
he were the only living thing about, paused 
in his chewing to wriggle his nose at the 
delicious smelling tidbit, and suddenly he 
realized that he was famished. What could 
it be, he asked himself? Not wild honey, 
but something almost as good! After all, 
he found himself unhurt, and if that Boy 
came again, he thought he could hold his 
own in a tussle. 

Gingerly he reached forth a snowy paw to 
draw the goody nearer, then he licked the 


74 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

brown lump with an inquring pink tongue. 
Urn! Never in all his short life had he 
tasted anything better. Bears have a great 
sweet tooth. He crunched it delightedly. 

Now began an experiment that the Boy 
had performed with other wild folk. Would 
the cub be too frightened to respond ? Step¬ 
ping quietly into view, he held out a great 
handful of the tempting lumps, and the little 
bear sniffed longingly. But at the same 
time he eyed the blue-overalled biped with 
not a little suspicion. He remembered, how¬ 
ever, that it was the same Boy who had 
passed them once before, and who had not 
harmed him; but then Mother Brown Bear 
had taught him to be wary of what he did 
not understand. 

By and by the Boy threw him another 
lump of sugar. That was a language he did 
understand. Chinook snapped it up, and his 
mouth watered for more. He could smell 
that the Boy had more to give him. Softly, 
slowly and ever so unalarmingly, the Boy 


A LIVE SNOWBALL 


75 


came a few steps nearer, holding ont the 
sweets, the cub watching intently. It took 
quite a while, for the little bear had to focus 
his mind so whole-heartedly on the feast be¬ 
fore him as to forget those amazing moments 
when Boy and Ranger had thrown their 
coats over his head and fore paws and 
knotted the rope around his neck. But 
after all, Chinook had never in all his life 
received a hurt, and his mother was not 
there to sound her suspicions. Why not 
consider the Boy a friend ? In the stillness 
of the mountain twilight the miracle was ac¬ 
complished, and the furry woods boy allowed 
the human Boy to feed him. 

Then from behind a fallen log not two 
stones’ throw distant the Boy saw the mas¬ 
sive head and shoulders of Mother Brown 
Bear. That might be a different story. His 
father saw her too, for from the high little 
cabin window he called: 4 ‘ Quick! Inside!” 
Out he drew his revolver, in case the alarmed 
mother should think it necessary to demolish 


76 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

the cub’s abductor. But the Boy ran in¬ 
doors, and then both watched from the 
window. 

“Aw, it’s all right!” Chinook assured his 
mother, and she could tell from one sniff at 
his sugary face that he had been faring well. 
But she was still so nervous at having found 
him gone, and so angry at the thought that he 
had been captured, that—after nuzzling him 
all over to make sure no bones were broken 
—she only grunted a harsh “Come on!” to 
hide her fear, and led the way rapidly back 
into the woods, where Snookie waited. But 
Chinook was brought up so abruptly by his 
tether that his feet slid out from under him. 

“Could I cut him loose?” whispered the 
Boy. 

“No need,” smiled his father, for even as 
they spoke, Mother Brown Bear came back 
to gnaw furiously at the rope, and in a mo¬ 
ment the little bear was free. 

“Now he’ll wear a collar,” laughed the 
Boy. 

“Don’t you believe it! His mother will 


A LIVE SNOWBALL 


77 


have the rest of that rope off in no time,” 
the Ranger reassured him. 

“Isn’t it a shame we couldn’t be friends, 
that little bear and I ?” 

4 4 You could, if this were a National Park 
where bears are never hunted.” 


CHAPTER XI 


THE INDIAN TRAPPER 

W HILE on Lookout Peak, the cubs 
were shown the elk that Cougar 
hunted, and once they found his huge, cat¬ 
like footprints, which made Mother Brown 
Bear take the cubs hustling back to safer 
territory without pause for rabbit hunting. 

On their return trip, she took them cir¬ 
cling southward along a little travelled trail, 
till after camping for several days through 
the green gloom of a spruce wood, where 
tiny streams tinkled unseen among the 
dense undergrowth, and wild berries, lily 
roots and pine nuts spiced their diet, they 
came to a stand of mammoth sugar pines, 
with whose equally mammoth cones the cubs 
played football. Here they came very near 
pouncing on a prickly porcupine, for which, 
their mother told them, they would have 

78 


THE INDIAN TRAPPER 


79 


been sorry, for his barbed stiff hair would 
have hurt their paws terribly. 

When it rained, they found an incense 
cedar, beneath whose flat, ferny yellow-green 
fronds they kept as dry as they would have 
been in their rock den. It was all a part of 
their education, for the more tree-learning 
they acquired, the better would they be able 
to take care of themselves and their families 
in the years to come. 

As they got down to the lower levels, not 
far from the seashore, Mother Brown Bear 
showed them a grove of giant Redwoods 
(Sequoia Sempervirens), which in that 
moist climate were always green. The cubs 
felt as small as mice beside the Big Trees, 
up and down whose awesome trunks they 
climbed, exploring. These trees had been 
seedlings when the world was young, four 
thousand years ago: they were almost pre¬ 
historic monsters of the vegetable kingdom. 
The cubs were disappointed to find that the 
cones of these huge trees were the tiniest of 
any they had even seen. They found a hole 


80 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

in a fallen log that would have made a den 
for a dozen bears rolled into one, and they 
coaxed hard to be allowed to stay there; but 
Mother Brown Bear, sniffing inquiringly 
about, found that it belonged to another 
bear who must have been, like themselves, 
off camping, and would not have allowed 
them to hunt in his territory. 

Then vacation time was over, and they 
were safely back in their spruce woods, with 
the grove of yellow pines for /neighbors. 
And thankful they were to see the old famil¬ 
iar spots, for a bear loves home, despite his 
vacation rambling. The soft haze of In¬ 
dian summer had turned to frosty mornings 
when Douglas, the red squirrel, and all his 
tribe chattered busily garnering the pine 
and spruce nuts for their winter larder. 
Mrs. Tree Mouse had her children trained 
to look out for themselves, and Paddy-paws 
the bobcat and Mazama the mysterious owl 
had reduced the numbers of the red-backed 
burrow mice who ran squeaking across the 


THE INDIAN TRAPPER 


81 


open. Mother Cinnamon Bear left the cubs 
more and more to their own devices. 

One day Chinook discovered a strange 
footprint. It was not that of any four- 
footed creature, nor was it that of the Ran¬ 
ger and his Boy. It was that of the Indian 
Trapper who caught forest people for their 
fur. He came every winter to set traps for 
bears and bobcats, foxes, skunks, and other 
furry folk, and once Chinook came upon one 
of the bob kittens who cried pitifully, with 
her paw caught fast in a steely-smelling 
thing that had been hidden under the leaves 
and baited with a fish. And it was the last 
time he ever saw that kitten! After that 
Chinook avoided the neighborhood of that 
steel smell. But Snookie had yet to become 
trap-wise. Mother Brown Bear had been 
off on a trip by herself, or she could have 
told the cubs that the smell of steel and In¬ 
dian moccasins was a danger signal. 

But one day she came back, just as the two 
cubs had started off on a nutting expedition. 


82 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

The cold rains had set in, and they were all 
beginning to feel sleepy, as bears do in win¬ 
ter, even when it isn’t cold enough to make 
hibernating necessary. It must have been 
that Snookie was thinking about how nice it 
would be to find some snug hollow tree and 
curl up with her toes inside, and one paw 
over her nose, and sleep for a week at a 
time. At any rate, without once noticing 
where she was going, she stepped into a lynx 
trap. It caught her middle toe, and she gave 
a yell of pain. 

Now it happened that Mother Bear was 
quite a distance back along the trail, and the 
Indian Trapper was not far ahead. For a 
time Snookie tugged and struggled to get 
free, while Chinook sniffed about her wor¬ 
riedly, his fur bristling as he detected the 
warning smell of steel. But though the 
ribbon of the breeze soon began to tell him 
that the Trapper was coming, he would not 
leave her. He could still fight. 

On came the Trapper. He carried a belt 
axe, and when he saw the handsome brown 


THE INDIAN TRAPPER 


83 


bear cub, he thought what a fine little fur 
rug her coat would make for his cabin floor. 
Swinging his belt axe, he was about to strike 
Snookie over the head. But at that psycho¬ 
logical moment a small-sized ball of fury 
hurled itself at his legs. It was Chinook, 
and he set his sharp white teeth into the 
Indian’s leg and clawed to such good effect 
that the Trapper turned his attention wholly 
to the bear he hadn’t caught. That saved 
Snookie for the moment, and in just an¬ 
other instant Mother Brown Bear came gal¬ 
loping to the scene of action with such a 
growl of fury that the man forgot his axe 
and leapt for a limb of the nearest tree. 
He made it just in time to draw himself out 
of Mother Brown Bear’s reach, though 
Chinook had clung to his leg till he found 
himself swinging in midair. Then while 
Snookie tugged agonizingly to get her toe 
free, Chinook and Mother Brown Bear kept 
watch on the trapper, the latter standing 
furiously on her hind legs to try to reach his 
feet, while Chinook growled awful threats. 


84 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

Finally with one good jerk and a cry of 
anguish, Snookie was free of the trap, 
though she ran limping down the trail with 
her toe still in the steel teeth. With a final 
volley of threats, Mother Brown Bear and 
her son left the Trapper feeling about as bad 
as the cub felt with her bloody little foot— 
that would forever after leave a four-toed 
footprint. 

“If it hadn’t been for you,” Mother 
Brown Bear told Chinook, “your sister 
would have been killed and eaten.” 

“Huh!” sniffed her young hopeful, “we 
cubs fight, but I guess we’d stand by each 
other when there’s trouble.” 


CHAPTER XII 


in the raven’s nest 

T HAT winter was a mild one, and though 
Mother Cinnamon Bear slept most of it 
away in the den among the rocks, she 
wouldn’t let the cubs come with her. Ever 
since she had gone off on that trip without 
them, she had left them more and more to 
their own devices, till now she told them 
plainly that they must find themselves a 
place to hibernate. Snookie found another 
den just big enough for herself, and lined it 
with pine needles to make it soft and warm. 
Chinook preferred a hollow tree, from which 
hung great clusters of gray-green mistletoe 
with its wax-white berries. Several times 
they had crossed the trail of Cougar, the 
mountain lion, and he was glad to find a hole 
into which he himself could barely squeeze, 
and high enough above ground that Cougar 

85 


86 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

wouldn’t be likely to notice it as he went by. 
There he would sleep for a while—say, sev¬ 
eral weeks, longer if it turned too cold— 
then he would sally forth for a few mice. 
But he found he hadn’t much of an appetite 
when he didn’t exercise. 

It was not till April that the cubs learned 
why Mother Brown Bear had thought the 
old cave would be crowded. 

There were two new little brown bears 
and a black one, and their mother wouldn’t 
let anyone so rough as the yearling cubs 
come near the helpless mites. For when the 
new baby brothers and sister had been 
born, they had been no larger than long- 
legged, cocker-spaniel babies and not half 
so well clothed. Even when they were two 
months old they were barely strong enough 
to follow their mother when she went out 
for mushrooms. 

“Huh! They’re no good!” decided 
Snookie and Chinook. “We can have more 
fun by ourselves.” 

They couldn’t remember that they too, 


IN THE RAVEN’S NEST 87 

just a twelve-month ago, had been blind and 
helpless, and no end of nuisance. 

It was along in May that Snookie took a 
notion to explore the cliff wall high above 
the foaming waters of the swollen river. 
Chinook preferred to stay down by the 
river spearing the salmon who came leaping 
over the falls and swimming upstream 
against the rapids to lay their eggs in the 
shallows, where the newly hatched fish 
would be safer than they would have been in 
the ocean. 

Snookie, reaching the wind-swept edge of 
the canyon wall where nothing but twisted 
mountain pines and junipers could keep 
their foothold, found the dwarfed trees flat¬ 
tened out to leeward of the wind that blew 
steadily from off the broad Pacific. The 
little bear found that she could walk right 
on top of the low-flung oranches, so closely 
were they matted from years of clinging to¬ 
gether for mutual protection. Some of 
these sturdy dwarfed and ancient trees 
grew so low and so rooflike that Snookie 


88 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

could barely stand upright under the canopy 
they made. It was a wonderful place to 
play. 

A mammoth bird’s nest had been tucked 
away in a cranny of the rocks, right on the 
canyon rim, and at first a great black bird 
sat on it. By and by Snookie saw that the 
great black bird was gone and that a black 
speck winged its way down to the river. 
This seemed like a good time to inspect that 
nest. She found five delicious tasting eggs, 
and she had just finished her meal and was 
trying to lick the egg from her chin, when 
the great bird came back. It was Mrs. 
Raven, and my, what threats and insults she 
did screech at Snookie! At her cries Mr. 
Raven, too, appeared and joined in the 
clamor. (And all this time their visitor was 
too surprised to think.) Then the mother 
bird was upon her, beating her with her 
wings. The little bear hid her eyes, but her 
ears were still exposed, and she gave a 
squeal of protest, for they would have driven 
her right over the canyon rim, and Snookie 


IN THE RAVEN’S NEST 89 

had no wings. Then the father raven 
pecked a beakful of fur right out of the 
middle of her back. 

Suddenly the little bear remembered the 
tunnels of dwarf pine trees just above, and 
making a blind dash for them, with the 
birds still beating her, she crawled under 
this shelter, where the ravens could not 
follow. 

My, but she was a sore little bear! But 
here she was, at any rate, safe, if not alto¬ 
gether sound, and she told herself she knew 
something about ravens that Chinook hadn’t 
learned. Besides, those eggs certainly were 
delicious, she comforted herself, as she 
curled up to sleep off her troubles. 


CHAPTER XIII 

CHINOOK PLAYS THE CLOWN 

HINOOK had fished till his sides were 



rounded with his catch, then he had 
curled up in a ball in a tree top and taken 
a nap, while Snookie was having her 
adventure. 

When he awoke, he went for a swim in 
the sunny shallows, and then he was hun¬ 
gry again, for Chinook was growing fast. 
Just as the lowering sun began sending slant 
bars through the trees that fringed the 
canyon rim, he came to where the 
canyon floor widened into a meadow sweet 
with honey-lupin, shoulder high. Bees 
hummed among the blossoms, and it occurred 
to him that there might be a bee tree some¬ 
where near by. Sure enough, a tantalizing 
odor came to him on the breeze. It was the 
work of but a few minutes to follow his nose 


90 


CHINOOK PLAYS THE CLOWN 91 

till he found the tree where the bees were 
going in and out in a black swarm. 

The owners objected hotly to his discovery 
of their hidden stores, but they couldn’t 
sting much through his thick fur. They 
really could do little harm except about his 
face, and with slaps of his fore paws he kept 
the insects away from his eyes and nose 
as he climbed the tree. Then a red hot fel¬ 
low left a sting in his sensitive nose and 
several burned his ears and lips, but he had 
had experience of bee trees before, and he 
managed to keep his eyes protected. Then, 
oh, joy of joys, he had his head in the hol¬ 
low where they kept their honey, and as he 
sampled it, he considered it more than worth 
the stings they had given him. Face and 
fore paws quickly became plastered with 
the sticky mass, and when he had made very 
sure he could reach no more, he backed down 
the tree leaving sticky paw marks all along 
the trunk. 

Now the ground beneath was strewn with 
dried pine needles and fallen leaves, and 


92 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

when he walked, the leaves stuck to his feet. 
Biting at them to see what was the matter, he 
got his sticky face all plastered with twigs 
and leaves, and trying to wipe them off with 
his fore paws, he only made things worse, 
until his eyes were too covered with leaves 
and he couldn’t even see where he was going. 
Stumbling blindly about, and still slapping 
at the bees who seemed to want to get eaten 
alive, he fairly tripped over his clumsy feet, 
which were now twice as wide as they ought 
to have been. He bumped and tumbled 
about, and wandered around and around, 
now pawing at his eyes but only making 
more leaves stick to his lids, plastering them 
the tighter. It was a senseless predicament 
to have gotten into. Then his ears pricked 
to the sound of running water. Enraged 
bees still scrambled through his fur looking 
for a vulnerable spot in which to leave their 
stings, but Chinook was headed for that 
sound of running water. It would cool the 
feverish feeling in his nose. 

Just as the little bear had begun to wonder 


CHINOOK PLAYS THE CLOWN 


93 


if he were not wandering around in some 
bad dream, he stumbled off the bank and 
went splash into a deep pool. Striking out 
as vigorously as if he knew just where he 
were going, he began circling around and 
around, for it was a tiny whirlpool he had 
fallen into. It was lucky for him it wasn’t 
a large one. But the swift, churning water 
did its work on him: it washed off the honey 
and the clinging leaves. 

As soon as Chinook could open his eyes 
again, he floundered out of that pool a 
cleansed and chastened little bear. 


CHAPTER XIV 


A MOUSE ON WINGS 


HAT’S that'?” whispered Snookie, 



as the cubs were starting out one 


evening in the glow of the long June sunset 
to explore a new part of the woods. 

“A bird, of course!” Chinook told her, 
as an orange-winged creature that at first 
looked as large as a crow swooped and 
darted after the flying insects which were 
its prey. But as the cubs came nearer, they 
could see that the body that carried those 
wide wings was only the size of a sparrow’s. 

“It is not a bird,” said Snookie. “It has 
no feathers.” 

“It’s a mouse, then,” guessed Chinook. 

“Did you ever see a mouse fly?” asked his 
sister scornfully. 

“Well, you see one now, don’t you?” 

“I don’t know whether I do or not,” for 


94 


A MOUSE ON WINGS 


95 


by now the cubs could see that the strange 
creature had perfectly naked wings that 
looked as thin as maple leaves, and that its 
little body was covered with fine fur. It 
was Nyc-ter-is, the bat, and except that he 
had no particular tail, he did look more than 
a little like a mouse, though his face and 
ears were rounder. His fore arms seemed 
to be fast to the first half of his wings, and 
there three of his fingers had grown so long 
that they held out the rest of the wing like 
the ribs of an umbrella. His thumbs, which 
came just halfway along the upper edge 
of the wing, had great hooked claws on them, 
and Snookie wondered what they could be 
for. He was altogether the queerest look¬ 
ing small person the cubs had ever seen, as he 
swooped and circled after moths and crick¬ 
ets and mosquitoes. 

Chinook made a leap to catch him and 
have a closer look, but quick as was the 
little bear, the bat was quicker. He 
squeaked viciously, and showed his teeth, 
which grated together warningly. 


96 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

“You little fiend!” laughed Chinook. 
“Are you really threatening to bite us?” 

“I’ll certainly fight if I have to!” the 
eerie mite assured them in a high-pitched 
squeak that they understood as plain as 
bear talk, and off he darted to the limb of 
a tree, where hung his mate, head downward. 

The cubs followed curiously. It looked 
as if Mrs. Red Bat had simply hung herself 
up by her thumbs, with her wings folded. 
“That’s one way of taking a nap,” Chinook 
exclaimed. ‘ ‘ Let’s try it! ” 

“Oh, look!” cried Snookie, “she’s got 
four baby bats!” And sure enough, there 
were the wee mites, having their supper and 
hanging from their mother’s teats. 

They watched for a while. Just at dusk 
the mother bat flew off to get her own sup¬ 
per, but though they had been watching 
closely, the cubs could not see what she had 
done with her babies. There seemed to be 
no nest, and though they climbed the tree 
to find out, there was not the sign of a baby 
bat anywhere to be found. Then when the 


A MOUSE ON WINGS 


97 


cubs bad forgotten all about it in tbe fun 
of chasing crickets, she suddenly swooped so 
near that they could plainly see her. What 
was their amazement to find that she still 
carried the four little bats clinging to her 
teats! They must have been heavy young¬ 
sters, too; but her wings were powerful, 
being so large for such a small body, and her 
devotion seemed to be equal to that of any 
other mammal. 

That same June the Eanger and his Boy 
came, one day, upon a mother red bat hang¬ 
ing head downward, asleep, with her little 
ones, with her thumbs hooked in a low 
branch of a seedling yellow pine; but so still 
she hung, and so like the tree trunk was her 
orange tint, that even in full sunlight she 
might have escaped observation, had the Boy 
not been uncommonly accustomed to using 
his eyes. Gently he reached out a hand and 
lifted one of the baby bats from where it 
clung to its mother. It was too sleepy to 
protest. Its wee face looked as grotesque 
as that of a gnome the size of his thumb. 


98 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

“Dad, do you suppose I could tame it?” 
the Boy asked the Ranger. 

“It might die for need of its mother’s 
milk,” his father told him. “But I once 
tamed a half-grown bat. They make gentle 
pets if you treat them right, but if they 
consider it necessary to their safety, they 
can bite ferociously. 

“Most of our bats migrate South about 
September. I have heard sailors say that 
they sometimes fly hundreds of miles to 
reach the islands of the tropics. 

“These red bats, and their cousins the 
big hoary bats, are clean enough; but when 
I was down in Mexico I found a species that 
had the most disagreeable musky odor. 
They used to collect literally by the hundreds 
about old buildings and in church belfries 
and wherever they could find a dark cranny 
to hide in, till they simply made it impos¬ 
sible for people to come near. Those Mex¬ 
ican bats are the kind that live in caves 
and ruins—” 

“And in Hallowe’en pictures?” 


A MOUSE ON WINGS 


99 


“I dare say! As they fly only in the 
dark, I suppose they need their scent to help 
take the place of sight. They go with the 
Gila monsters and rattle-snakes.’’ 

“What good are they, anyway?” won¬ 
dered the Boy. 

“People used to think them just an un¬ 
mitigated pest, those smelly Mexican bats. 
But they do eat mosquitoes. I suppose they 
do their part, down in the malarial districts, 
in helping to exterminate the malarial mos¬ 
quitoes. They certainly do devour incred¬ 
ible numbers of insects, so I suppose they 
have their place in the scheme of things. 

“Be that as it may, we do have a bat, the 
big-eared desert bat, that is known to help 
the farmer, and that deserves to be pro¬ 
tected, just as much as the insect-eating 
birds. But people generally kill them on 
sight. These nice clean red bats, too, help 
to keep the Balance of Nature. I have 
never killed one in my life.” 

The Boy’s eyes marvelled as he gently 
gave the wee bat to its sleeping mother. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE SMUGGLER 


T HE Ranger had been puzzled by strange 
footprints he had found on the river 
bank. He had also been disturbed to learn 
that the lumbermen just over the pass were 
getting liquor. The lumber boss com¬ 
plained that in some mysterious way they 
were getting the forbidden stuff. There had 
been several serious accidents in felling the 
great trees because the men had been drink¬ 
ing. The Ranger suspected that there might 
be a smuggler about who was bringing rum 
from some point alongshore up the river, 
but he could find neither the man nor his 
cache. 

This summer the Ranger had his hands 
full, what with the danger of forest fires, 
and a dozen other things. The Boy wished 
he might help. 


100 


THE SMUGGLER 


101 


It fell to Chinook to play the instrument 
of destiny. Sniffing around one day, he 
found a cave in the rocks above the river 
bank from which issued the most enticing 
odor. It was like nothing he had ever 
whiffed before. It smelled as if it might be 
good, and he meant to find it. 

A few days later the Ranger’s Boy, look¬ 
ing for human footprints along the river 
bank, suddenly stopped to peer, for there— 
in an opening between the trees—was the lit¬ 
tle bear performing the most amazing antics. 
The strange part of it was that the usually 
alert cub didn’t even notice that the Boy 
was there. 

He had a brown jug in his forepaws, and 
first he lay down flat on his stomach and 
took a long drink, then, after spilling some 
of it on the ground, he sat back, leaning 
against a stump with his legs straight out in 
front, as he tipped the jug with both paws. 
(The Boy could scarcely keep from laugh¬ 
ing aloud, but he kept tight hold on himself, 
for he wanted to see more.) 


102 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

When the jug seemed to have been emp¬ 
tied, the little bear attempted to arise 
and walk on his hind feet, but to the Boy 
who had seen similar human antics, it was 
plain that Chinook was intoxicated. He 
reeled from side to side, barely able to keep 
his balance, and then he fell flat on his back, 
still clinging to the jug, and, lying there with 
all fours in the air, began hoisting it about 
with his hind feet. He would have made a 
good circus clown, thought the Boy, for now 
he was turning somersaults, and now he was 
on his hind legs circling around and around 
with a joyous dancing step. It must have 
made him seasick, though we will draw the 
veil. But it had given the Boy an idea. 

* * Father!” he announced that night, “I’ll 
bet I know where the smuggler keeps his 
stuff!” and he related what he had seen that 
afternoon. Sure enough, they found a cave 
next day into which the rum had been smug¬ 
gled, and, lying in wait, a few days later, 
they caught the smuggler. But Chinook 
never knew why, on his return trip to the 



He had the brown jug in his forepaws 















THE SMUGGLER 


103 


cave of tantalizing odors, the jugs were all 
smashed and their contents gone. 

“Never mind,” he thought, chasing a pine 
cone. “ 111 bet I can find another bee tree.’’ 


CHAPTER XVI 

DOUGLAS SQUIRREL HAS COMPANY 

F OR several weeks the smell of wood 
smoke had come from the South. It 
was that warning smoke that had kept the 
Ranger ready at a moment’s notice from the 
fire lookouts to summon a hundred helpers 
from the lumber camp to cut a fire trench, 
for in the drier woods of California raged 
fearful forest fires. 

About that time the cubs began to notice 
that their woods were being visited by a num¬ 
ber of furred and feathered folk who did not 
belong there. Foxes slunk along the shad¬ 
ows as if aware that they were in unknown 
territory. A prickly porcupine family, a 
mother and four children, came lumbering, 
fearless and unafraid in their protecting 
spines. A black and white striped skunk 
and her five kittens came soon after, leaving 

104 


DOUGLAS SQUIRREL HAS COMPANY 105 

tiny bearlike footprints, and when one of 
the young foxes would have pounced on the 
littlest kitten, the kitten turned its back and 
raised its plumy tail, and stamped its feet 
angrily, and the mother fox signalled for 
her son to run fast, or something terrible 
would happen. The skunks also were com¬ 
pletely unafraid. 

Birds flew in increasing numbers through 
the tree tops, a few deer came feeding in a 
famished manner on the ferns and bracken, 
and any number of brown little cottontails 
came gnawing hungrily at every bit of green 
stuff they could reach without being caught. 
Douglas the squirrel watched from his tree 
top in amazement. For it was the squirrels 
who came in greatest numbers—gray squir¬ 
rels and red squirrels and little striped chip¬ 
munks. These fairly swarmed through the 
tree tops, while the smoke yellowed the sti¬ 
fling air and the sun glowed red all day long. 
The woods in which they had had their 
homes had burned, and while the wind for 
the most part came from the sea and blew 


106 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

the smoke eastward, the more experienced 
of the four-footed folk knew that the way to 
escape was neither to go with the wind nor 
against it, but at right angles to the march 
of the flames. 

Douglas, who had come to feel that he 
owned the woods around Mother Brown 
Bear’s den, swore and scolded and barked 
insults at the refugees, but it didn’t do him 
a particle of good. The best he could do 
was to hold his own particular spruce tree 
from their onslaught. The rich, nut-filled 
spruce cones and the great, heavy yellow 
pine cones on which he had feasted fat all 
summer, and all the huge stores of these good 
things that he had hidden in every hollow 
log and cranny of the rocks—all these riches 
that would have lasted him for years if left 
undisturbed were being appropriated by 
the starving hordes whose own stores had 
been burned. 

If the cubs hadn’t been so fond of nuts 
themselves that they really preferred them 
to squirrel meat, they would have had a 


DOUGLAS SQUIRREL HAS COMPANY 107 

great time that summer, for some of the 
younger squirrels were not a hit cautious. 

“What are all you folks coming here for, 
anyway?” Douglas demanded, as an old 
gray squirrel came running along his fa¬ 
vorite limb. 

“For something to eat,” answered the old 
fellow wearily, cutting off a spruce cone and 
turning it rapidly in his paws as he cut one 
scale after another to lay bare the nut. 
“Personally, I mean to keep on till I find a 
certain grove of lodgepole pines that I hap¬ 
pen to know about.” 

“Why, are they better than these ?” Doug¬ 
las demanded impudently. 

“The nuts are no better, perhaps, but 
there are sure to he more of them. I’ve 
traveled many a weary mile since my youth, 
for my family has been driven by fire, or 
drouth and poor nut crops, to one grove after 
another; but never yet have I known a lodge- 
pole not to be full of nuts; for if one year’s 
crop has failed, there are still the crops of 
past years clinging to the branches. No, 


108 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

sir! I never knew a grove of lodge- 
pole pines where there weren’t nuts in 
abundance.” 

“Well, then, why didn’t you move into 
one long ago?” Douglas was still rude. 

“Why don’t you move somewhere else 
yourself?” asked the old squirrel patiently. 

“Because this is my tree! These are my 
woods! This is my home! My family and 
friends all live right around here. What a 
question to ask! Why should I move ? 
Why should I go some place else?” he 
barked, his tail jerking angrily at every 
phrase. 

“Don’t you see, ” the old squirrel chittered 
mildly, “that we love our homes? Why, 
every last one of us had our own tree that 
no one else ever dreamed of intruding upon, 
except to run through the branches when it 
didn’t seem safe on the ground. Of course 
we never objected to anyone running across 
our back yard if he had to. But no one ever 
dreamed of touching our stores. Why, we 
knew every twig and knothole, and every 


DOUGLAS SQUIRREL HAS COMPANY 109 

place a nut was hidden. I assure you we 
never would have left our homes if we hadn’t 
been driven to it. But I can see your heart 
has never been softened by trouble. You 
have had life too easy here.” But Douglas 
was not listening. He had started down to 
fight and threaten and try to drive a family 
of half-starved refugees from some stores 
he had thought safely hidden along the un¬ 
der side of a log. Mrs. Douglas, ashamed of 
her mate, stayed close to her nest, though 
she saw her pantries being invaded. “I do 
hope Douglas won’t give them a wrong im¬ 
pression about our family,” she told herself. 

Just then Chinook, the little brown bear, 
came along. “I’ll eat you alive!” he chal¬ 
lenged Douglas, and started merrily after 
him. By the time Douglas had thrown his 
pursuer off the track and returned to the 
scene, his stores had been raided by dozens 
of immigrant squirrels. 

“Now I’ll have to work hard all fall,” 
Douglas complained to any who might listen, 
“to collect enough for winter.” 


110 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

“Why not?” called the old squirrel. “It 
isn’t the way of the woods to corner more 
than you can eat. What right had you to 
those nuts, when others were starving? No 
one will bother your cache if you keep it 
down to a reasonable size, but beyond that, 
these woods are for all. If anything, it is 
you red squirrels who do the stealing from 
us gray squirrels.” 

What Douglas retorted wouldn’t be fit to 
print. 

“My!” chirped a young gray squirrel who 
had been down getting a quick lunch. He 
had been following his more experienced 
fellow refugee for miles. “I had the aw- 
fullest time crossing the open spaces! Did 
you ever see so many hawks and owls in your 
life?” 

“That is why I always went around the 
long way where I could leap from one tree 
to another,” said the old squirrel. “We 
didn’t cross half as many open spaces as 
some of those young fellows who got 
caught.” 


DOUGLAS SQUIRREL HAS COMPANY 111 

“How ever did you know where to go?” 
marvelled the young squirrel. 

“Oh, I always have an eye out for a pos¬ 
sible emergency, and every time I go on a 
vacation ramble, I notice where there is good 
feeding, and then I try to make a mental 
map of the region. You young fellows are 
more agile, but you haven’t had our experi¬ 
ence, all the same. Every summer, when it 
gets to a time when everything is ripe and I 
can live off the country, I go forest-cruising, 
and I don’t do it altogether for a good time, 
either.” 

“That brown squirrel with the orange un¬ 
derneath, he’s a handsome fellow,” ventured 
the young gray squirrel. 

“Douglas?” The old squirrel sniffed in 
disgust. ‘ 4 1 much prefer that fellow, ’ ’ nod¬ 
ding to where a big Oregon chipmunk sat 
on a stump and gave every passer-by a soci¬ 
able “Chuck! Chuck!” He had only a 
few black stripes to adorn the brown of his 
coat. 

“Why, he’s the plainest chipmunk I ever 


112 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

saw,” said the young gray squirrel. “Not 
half as handsome as ours.” 

“All the same, I’ll wager he never has a 
grouch like the kind your handsome Doug¬ 
las has just been exhibiting. You certainly 
come to know equirrel nature when a big 
calamity like this rubs off our surface 
manners!” 

4 ‘You certainly do, sir,” agreed the young 
squirrel. “Here comes Douglas back 
again.” 

“To jaw us, I suppose. If I weren’t so 
rheumatic, I’d lick him for his impudence.” 

“I’ll lick him for you,” volunteered the 
young squirrel, and the last thing Chinook 
saw, Douglas was being chased ferociously 
through the tree tops. 


CHAPTER XYII 


WAPITI 

T HAT fall when Snookie and Chinook 
went camping, they first made their 
way back to Lookout Peak, for a few days 
of coasting and chasing pack-rats and 
“snowshoe rabbits,” then they took a ridge 
trail and journeyed clear over into a moun¬ 
tain valley where grazed a herd of elk. 

These wapiti (American cousins of the 
European stag) were the largest deer the 
cubs had ever seen, and one of them had the 
most ferocious great wide antlers. 

“I’d hate to get that bull after me,” said 
Snookie. 

“Well, you can tell his head end from a 
long way off, ’ ’ observed Chinook. 

“By the antlers?” 

“You can tell, when he’s too far away to 
see his horns.” 


113 


114 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

“Howl” 

“By his tail end. Don’t yon see that big 
light-colored patch?” referring to the rump 
spots they wore. 

i 6 That’s right,’ 9 reflected Snookie. 6 6 Look 
at them trailing up through the woods.” 
For as the wind shifted and carried the herd 
the scent of the two bears, the wapiti had 
taken alarm. 

“I expect they can follow each other from 
a long way off,” reasoned Snookie, “their 
tail ends show up so plainly.” Her mother 
had taught her to look for the reason in 
everything. 

“There’s always a reason,” her brother 
agreed. “Whoof! There’s Cougar!” Far 
away across the meadow they could see the 
giant cat creeping sinuously like a gray- 
brown shadow against the dark green of the 
spruce woods. Cougar had craftily come up 
with the wind in his nostrils, and he could 
smell the elk when they could not get his 
scent. 

“He’ll never dare attack them,” thought 


WAPITI 


115 


Snookie, who had been chased and wounded 
by a mule deer she had come too near at the 
rutting season. 

“He won’t dare come near the bull,” said 
Chinook. “But I’ll bet he’d like to catch a 
young cow.” But though the two cubs 
waited, interested, till after dark, Cougar 
still crouched in the forest fringe. As night 
had fallen, nothing but the light rump 
patches showed where the herd was gather¬ 
ing to go to sleep. The cubs were mystified 
when, every now and then, one of these light 
patches would completely disappear, when 
in the dusk they could see no more than if 
the great animals had been swallowed by the 
earth. Then as suddenly, there they would 
be again. “I know,” Chinook reasoned it 
out. “It must be when they turn around 
facing this way that we can’t see the rump 
spots.” 

If they hadn’t still been a little afraid of 
Cougar, yearling cubs that they were, they 
would have crept nearer to see what was go¬ 
ing on over there where, for aught they 


116 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

knew, the lion still crouched ready for a 
spring. After awhile they gave it up. As 
an actual fact, Cougar too had given it up, 
as the herd picked the very centre of the 
meadow in which to sleep, and the antlered 
bull still kept watch over his harem. 

That night, after the stars came out, the 
cubs made their way to the head of a river 
they had been following, and against the 
quaking aspen that grew in the moist 
ground, they stretched as high as they could 
reach, and clawed the bark to show how tall 
they were. Chinook was slightly larger 
than his sister, though she fought so well 
that now she could always hold her own in a 
scrap. Soon, he decided, he wouldn’t have 
her tagging him everywhere he went. She 
was always so much more cautious, so much 
less ready to take a chance. She took life 
too seriously. By another year or so he’d 
be staking out his own range, holding it 
against all comers, and perhaps finding a 
mate. He certainly was getting to be a big 
bear. He wasn’t even sure if he were really 


WAPITI 


117 


afraid of Cougar any more. Still, he’d be 
happier if only the great cat would go away. 
When he thought of his long winter sleeps, 
he didn’t like the idea of having such a 
neighbor to come up on him when he wasn’t 
looking. Cougar was so quick and agile! 

Here in the boggy ground about the spring 
they caught a frog apiece, but they were not 
really hungry, for all day they had been 
stuffing great pawfuls of thimbleberries, 
elderberries, blackberries, dogwood seed and 
even spiny wild gooseberries, to say nothing 
of several kinds of nuts and roots, into their 
mouths. They had also had good luck with 
their mousing. Their sides were getting 
fatter and fatter. They would be w^ell 
prepared for the winter cold. 

After a brief nap, they started on to an¬ 
other mountainside to see what that was like. 
In these clear altitudes the stars were so 
many more than they had been in the moist 
lower slopes, and so much more brilliant, 
that they had no trouble whatever in finding 
their way. Down through the head of a 


118 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

canyon, then up again they climbed, till by 
dawn they were once more high above tim¬ 
berline. Where broken slide-rock led to the 
snowbanks of the peaks, they began hearing 
a curious little noise halfway between a 
bark and a bleat. It was like no sound the 
cubs had ever heard before, and it was the 
hardest thing in the world to tell where it 
came from. Now the nasal “Eh! Eh!” 
seemed to sound from under their very feet, 
and they would begin digging gleefully. In 
another minute it would sound from away 
off to the right or the left, or at any rate it 
seemed to (the ruse was a bit of ven¬ 
triloquism) . To the cubs it was most 
mysterious. 

When at last yellow dawn had streamed 
warmingly from peak to distant peak, Chi¬ 
nook saw a small brown ball of fur the size 
of a half-grown cottontail dart from the 
rock right before his eyes. As he had looked 
off over the peaks, he must have glanced 
straight at the creature. But it was hidden 
in the rock-slide before Chinook could get 


WAPITI 


119 


over his surprise. In a few minutes it ap¬ 
peared on a rock higher up, but went back 
into some tunnel before the cubs could get 
into action. Its ears were too round for 
those of a bunny, though, and it had seemed 
to have no tail at all. For it was a pika, a 
“little chief hare,” who makes hay for its 
winter stores and lives alone on the highest 
peaks, buried under feet of snow the better 
half of the year. It would make tender eat¬ 
ing, if only the cubs could catch it. 

Thereafter they spent several hours dig¬ 
ging among the rocks, but always, just as 
they thought they surely had it cornered, 
the pika would squeak from some place else. 
Were there several pikas, or was it only one? 
They did not know, but when they got too 
hungry, they gave it up to hunt for some¬ 
thing surer. 


CHAPTER XVIII 

COUGAR GOES COASTING 


O N the rock-slide there had been not so 
much as a spear of grass to eat, and 
the cubs trod hungrily back to timber line. 

That day they spent chasing “snowshoe 
rabbits,” and the chase took them back to 
the alpine meadow where they had watched 
the wapiti. There the cubs took a nap be¬ 
neath an upturned tree root, for now they 
loved to sleep by day so that they could be 
out all night when there was so much more 
going on in the w T oods about them. 

A weird screech sounded from the dark 
depths of the spruces. It was Cougar! 
The cry came again. 

The great cat must have been trying hard 
to startle small game out of its safe hiding, 
for, as the cubs drew nearer, they could hear 
the death scream of a hare. All night Cou- 
120 


COUGAR GOES COASTING 


121 


gar hunted, while the cubs caught mice and 
nibbled spruce nuts just to leeward of him. 
At times the lion crept back to watch the 
wapiti, who again slept in a circle in the 
very centre of the open space; but with the 
old bull on guard with his sharp antlers 
Cougar kept his distance. 

That night brought the first snow of the 
season whirling over the high country. The 
cubs noticed that the wapiti grazed restlessly 
that morning through the melting white¬ 
ness. By and by they began to gather into 
line, with the old bull at their head, and 
started off along a highway marked by the 
hoofs and paws of countless travellers. The 
trail led over the Pass into a lower valley. 
The cubs followed curiously, and as the 
wapiti got their scent the whole herd began 
to run. 

Now Cougar, after having satisfied his ap¬ 
petite, had taken a cross-cut to one of his 
haunts so as to keep his fur dry. It was a 
favorite haunt because it directly overlooked 
all who came by on the trail from the Pass. 


122 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

Just below, to the north, sloped a long snow¬ 
bank left from the winter. Stretched out in 
the noonday warmth of his overhanging rock 
ledge, where the September sun had quickly 
melted off the snow, with nothing but a 
twisted juniper to cut off his view, he 
snoozed with one eye half open; and his pale 
brown coat matched the rock so perfectly 
that it would have taken a sharp eye to see 
him. 

Suddenly his ears pricked to a sound from 
the Pass, and his yellow eyes narrowed as 
through the snow-covered notch appeared 
the broad antlers and massive head and 
shoulders of the approaching bull wapiti. 
At the same time the wind brought him un¬ 
mistakable evidence that the whole herd was 
following, and he could hear the approach¬ 
ing clap of hoof-beats on the run. 

Cougar’s muscles tensed as he drew his 
legs beneath him ready for a spring. It was 
the chance he had been longing for. He 
would wait till the old bull was safely past, 
and most of the cows were strung along the 


COUGAR GOES COASTING 123 

narrow trail between the bull and himself. 
Then he would bring down his meat. 

The cubs, lumbering along well to the rear 
of the herd, which had occasionally kicked 
a stone from the zigzag trail, arrived at the 
Pass just in time to see what happened. 

Cougar, flattened till his flat head seemed 
a part of the flat rock itself, and even the 
alert old bull wouldn’t have noticed him, had 
he looked at the overhanging ledge, waited 
till all the herd but one had trailed on down 
the mountainside. As the last young wapiti 
came along, Cougar leapt upon her back. 
The force of his spring knocked her down, 
which was what he had intended. But one 
thing he had not planned for: the new soft 
snow, covering the hard last winter’s yield, 
made his own feet slip out from under him; 
and still gripping the wapiti, he slid down, 
down, down the long snowbank, which as it 
grew steeper and steeper finally sent him 
head over heels. The great cat hissed and 
yowled. He, for one, was not fond of coast¬ 
ing. Fully thirty feet below he came to 


124 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

a stop when lie bumped into a tree trunk. 

The last the cubs saw of Cougar was the 
great cat disgustedly biting the snowballs 
from between his toes. 


CHAPTEB XIX 

MOUNTAIN BEAVER 


A BOVE the moist, ferny floor of a 
densely shaded mountain slope of al¬ 
most tropic richness, the cubs had noticed 
a squirrel harking in an alder thicket. 

As they approached to find out what he 
was harking at, their noses began telling 
them that here was a whole colony of crea¬ 
tures they had never smelled before. Soon 
they could see that the ground was a net¬ 
work of their tiny trails, together with an 
occasional footprint that had been left by 
the bobcat family. 

Not a movement was made above ground, 
but their sharp ears could detect scufflings 
and scrapings from underneath their feet. 
At the end of a fallen log Chinook found a 
dump of earth where a hole large enough 
for a woodchuck gave off that same strange 

125 


126 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

scent. Merrily he started digging. Well, 
he dug and he dug and he dug! He was dig¬ 
ging the roof from a branching tunnel, his 
nose telling him at every turn which way his 
prey was retreating. But still he dug and 
he dug. Several times he heard a tiny 
growling, and a snapping of angry teeth, 
but for half an hour he dug as fast as he 
could without once catching up with the flee¬ 
ing rodent. But that only made the little 
bear the more determined. 

Snookie, too, was digging, and he cer¬ 
tainly didn’t mean to let her catch one be¬ 
fore he did. The tunnel dwellers smelled 
a bit like muskrats and a bit like bunnies, 
but, had they only known it, they were moun¬ 
tain beaver, a species like nothing else at all, 
but called beavers by the Indians because of 
their soft fur. They look more like wood¬ 
chucks than anything else, because naturally 
all this digging had developed the most pow¬ 
erful shoulder muscles. 

Well, that whole oozy slope was fairly 
honeycombed with branching tunnels, and 


MOUNTAIN BEAVER 


127 


though the two cubs dug till they were tired, 
and no end covered with mud, the creatures 
kept escaping through their connecting run¬ 
ways. Somehow, it never occurred to the 
little bears to lie in wait at their exit holes 
as a bobcat might have done. They were 
too impatient. 

Then, two feet underground, Chinook 
came to a great round hole almost large 
enough for him to have curled up in himself, 
and here indeed was a feast for the pair of 
them; for though the anxious parents had 
long since carried all the babies out of the 
nursery and dragged them to safety by the 
backs of their necks, opening oft the nursery 
chamber were several clean, mud-plastered 
storerooms filled with fern roots, tender 
twigs and juicy bits of bark. Snookie re¬ 
membered that she had seen several trees 
completely girdled by gnawing teeth. This, 
then, was the reason why. 

After they had fed their fill, for a small 
sample of such hearty fare went a long way 
with them, the cubs gave up the chase and 


128 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

climbed into a tree where they could take a 
nap. When they awoke, the moon had 
risen. Down on the ground beneath, where 
before had been no sign of any living thing, 
now scampered mountain beaver by the 
dozen. Some of them were sitting up 
squirrel-like and eating, with a root or stalk 
held in their handlike paws. Others were 
carrying great bundles of green stuff in 
their jaws and dropping it beside their door¬ 
ways, with stems all laid neatly side by side, 
as if to dry it out before storing it. Still 
others were rapidly rebuilding their 
depleted tunnels. But though the cubs 
promptly came down and tried to have more 
fun, again they had the same baffling expe¬ 
rience. They caught not one mountain 
beaver. 


CHAPTER XX 

THE BIG ’QUAKE 

U TT OW I wish Cougar would go some- 
-*• -*■ where else to make his home!” Chi¬ 
nook kept wishing as November’s chill came 
on. “This looks like a hard winter. My 
fur has come in lots thicker than last year, 
and the squirrels have all laid in their win¬ 
ter stores earlier. I’ll bet you anything, 
once we get to sleep, we won’t want to wake 
up till spring!” 

“And Cougar might get hungry before we 
woke, ’ ’ Snookie caught his thought. 4 ‘ I won¬ 
der ! How I wonder if he really would have 
the courage to attack us, now that we’re so 
big?” 

“He could sneak up on us while we slept, 
and he’d just about have us at his mercy,” 
her brother pointed out. “I find I can’t 
possibly squeeze into that hole I slept in 

129 


130 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

last year. But if Cougar doesn’t mind 
bringing down wapiti, bow do we know he 
wouldn’t tackle yearling cub?” 

For all that, Snookie and Chinook soon 
found themselves getting so drowsy that they 
just couldn’t keep awake much longer, Cou¬ 
gar or no Cougar. One feels that way when 
one hibernates. They had found themselves 
a rock den apiece near where their mother 
lived, and already the snow had covered her 
doorway, and they wouldn’t have known she 
was there but for the steaming breath that 
melted a yellowed hole in the white. 

“Confound that Cougar!” growled Chi¬ 
nook. “Why doesn’t something dreadful 
happen to him?” 

He was startled out of his first delicious 
snooze, a few weeks later, by feeling the 
rocks tremble. A low sound like distant 
thunder, yet that was not thunder, sounded, 
seemingly from deep underground. 

“It’s another earthquake,” he told him¬ 
self, as a second trembling set the smaller 
rocks to sliding down the gulch. Instantly 


THE BIG ’QUAKE 


133, 


some advice his mother had once given him 
brought him wide awake with a snap. The 
rock den was not safe! He must make for 
the open! 

Snookie too remembered, and the two cubs 
raced up the gulch to an open space where 
the great trees were still quivering. “Is it 
all over?” whimpered Snookie, for she still 
felt that dizzying sidewise motion beneath 
her feet. 

It was not all over, for this was a big 
’quake such as only comes in years. A 
shake heavier than before sent the rock-slide 
of their gulch shooting down among the 
fallen logs. Larger rock-slides thundered 
down the mountainsides. Mother Brown 
Bear and the little sister and brothers of that 
summer’s raising went racing from their 
dens, the youngsters too scared to know 
which way to turn, for it was their first 
earthquake. One took to a tall tree, and 
clung there while it swayed. One started 
down along the rock-slide, and when, later, 
they found him, he lay there half buried, 


132 CHINOOK, THE CINNAMON CUB 

cut and bleeding, and glad to pull through 
alive. 

One of the new cubs ran out on the fallen 
logs, and was half buried beneath chips and 
branches as the whole structure shifted, then 
she struggled free and wisely climbed a sap¬ 
ling. Mother Brown Bear herself ran out 
into the middle of another open space. 

It all took place in a good deal less time 
than it takes to tell it. 

Then came a jerk that fairly took Chi¬ 
nook’s feet from under him, and with a 
louder subterranean growling the Big 
’Quake came. Dead trees came crashing 
down, huge boulders pounded down the 
mountainsides and shook the ground anew, 
and a slab of canyon wall was jolted loose 
along a fault line and went splashing into 
the roiling river. Then came hail in great, 
driving sheets, and it was over. The cubs 
ducked to shelter as the icy pellets struck 
about their ears. There was an overhang¬ 
ing rock ledge that had withstood the wild 
confusion. 


THE BIG ’QUAKE 


133 


When they peeked to see what had hap¬ 
pened, they found a great crack, as deep as 
a sapling pine and so wide they wouldn’t 
have ventured to leap across, where before 
had been level earth. It was an altered 
landscape in which they found themselves. 

Then a comic sight struck their eyes. It 
was Cougar, whose den must have been 
shaken to pieces in all this tumult. The 
great cat was racing along with his tail 
tucked trembling between his legs, and his 
ears laid flat against the hail, while, to judge 
from the way his body hugged the earth, he 
was too terrified to stand. His nose was 
pointed down canyon towards the Coast, and 
at the rate he was speeding, Chinook thought 
it would be safe to count on his never com¬ 
ing back. As his own fright dissolved at 
the feel of the earth once more firm beneath 
his feet, Chinook’s little black eyes began to 
twinkle. His wish had come true. 


THE END 













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